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-There is a THREE strike system. To begin with this debate is open to the people selected, and eventually the OU mods will split people up in a 1v1 debate or a different system idk. If you use a logical fallacy, or lack sufficient content in your post, then you lose a strike. When you hit 3 strikes you are ejected from the debate and can no longer post.

-We will be watching activity from these 10 users. If you don't post within an acceptable time-frame, you will lose a strike. I don't imagine we will be too harsh with this, since obv RL and stuff comes up but if your not posting, then you shouldn't be in this thread.

-List of fallcies can be found here: (thanks RBG). As the debate goes on, some additional fallacies might be added to this OP as best described by Eo:

Alternatively (or additionally), as the debate progresses, you could add fallacies that you see arise that weren't covered by the initial list. i.e. BadDebater 2777 and LoLAficionado7086 and Ojama all say that Politoed should be OU because it's terrible in Ubers, a fallacy not (yet) covered by the rules; a fallacy is therefore added called "Fundamental Misunderstanding of Tiering."

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Subject: Rain

On who starts the debate:

I'd like the pro-ban side of Rain to make a full argument on why they feel rain is broken or bad for the metagame that it deserves to be gone

Good day, Smogoners! (Smogonites? Smogoneans?) I'm jpw234 and this is my first legit opportunity to contribute to a big OU thread...so I'm excited! Thanks to ginganinja and the other people who set this up for letting me participate. While I don't have a well-formed opinion on this issue, I'm going to be supporting rain ban for now because I think that will prove to be the more controversial opinion. Which is fun.

I'd like to present a list of assumptions I'm going to make for ease of use when responding or attempting to understand where I'm coming from:
1. "Banning rain" only means banning Politoed (and any future pokemon with Drizzle). Politoed is not OU-worthy without Drizzle, so there shouldn't be complaints about inability to use Water Absorb Toed (lol). All your other rain toys are still available, just without the infinite rain.Edit: yee has brought to my attention that we would likely simply ban the Drizzle ability, meaning that Water Absorb Politoed would indeed be legal. If this was the tipping point for anybody, there you go.
2. One of the biggest draws of simulated competitive pokemon (which removes the rewarding feeling of ownership and satisfaction you get from grinding a team to 100 on a cartridge) is the ability to create new and innovative strategies. At competitive levels, the fun of online pokemon largely comes from the search for the best possible strategy you can get out of six pokemon. Inventing or popularizing a new strategy is the pinnacle of this.

The argument that I will make is not about "balance", because balance is a silly thing to argue about. The balance of the metagame is constructed by the metagame, it is not some external force that we can talk about. Ultimately a metagame with rain is balanced, but that doesn't make it good. Being balanced is only one of many virtues a metagame can have, and FAR OUTSTRIPPING it as a decision criterion should be the potential for creativity, which is central to my argument. Specifically, that the rain-dominated metagame greatly restricts the ability to gain the rewards I outlined in #2 above. Because this is not a strictly quantifiable argument I may be forced to use some anecdotal evidence, but I will attempt to sum up my argument in several points as follows.

1. Rain teams are highly reliant on rain to function.
This may seem tautological but is important to prove - in particular, sand teams aren't usually all that dependent on sand being up, so we shouldn't assume that rain teams are. And while there are some examples of rain teams who don't really care about the weather, on the whole this is not the case. The reason for this has to do with the benefits gained from rain, as opposed to those from sand or hail. Pokemon that benefit from rain do so in several ways:
1. They lose weaknesses, which improves their ability to take hits from a diversity of pokemon. Ferrothorn, Scizor, Forretress, etc.
2. They gain HP recovery, which improves their overall survivability. Tentacruel, Toxicroak, and defensive pokemon who would otherwise lose Lefties recovery from sand or hail.
3. They gain accuracy on their attacks, which improves their reliability offensively. Thundurus-T and electric friends, Tornadus, Dragonite, etc.
4. They gain power on water moves, which improves their wall-breaking ability. Keldeo, Starmie, Gyarados, etc.
Generally, the pokemon that end up in rain teams do so because they would gain a weakness without rain that makes them not so useful, and rain patches up that weakness in one of the above ways. Tentacruel doesn't spin on many non-rain teams, does it? This is true for rain offense - Thundurus-T loses reliable electric attacks, Keldeo becomes less frightening, etc. - and even more true for rain stall - FerroCruel is INFURIATING with rain up but quickly becomes much less intimidating with sand, sun or hail.

2. The path of least resistance is, therefore, to utilize your own weather when creating a team.
"Path of least resistance" is the critical term. It is certainly possible to handle rain threats without taking advantage of rain yourself, or switching up the weather. But the fact that a couple teams CAN do it does not at all mean that it's the easiest way to go, and it's unreasonable to expect those seeking competitive success to purposefully make things harder on themselves. In the end, if a team is gaining a large advantage by using the weather, the easiest thing to do is nullify the advantage - either by using rain to your own benefit or by changing the weather to something else.

3. A gravitation toward weather at the highest levels greatly restricts the number of OU-viable strategies, and greatly restricts the number of OU-viable pokemon. This should be avoided, by assumption 2.
Weather centralizes. That's a fact. If we've gotten this far we've accepted that most battles are going to be about controlling the weather, and it is silly to win the weather war and not use that to your advantage. However, there are a limited number of pokemon who can benefit from each weather. Sun in particular is massively restricted (the joke that is accepted as fact is that every sun team is Ninetales/Venusaur/Dugtrio/Volcarona/Spinner/Dragon), but sand and rain are as well. Once we let the weather in, the number of strategies is automatically limited and the number of pokemon is as well.
Let's, for example take a look at the OU Stats, the 1850 ones. Looking at only pokemon with at least 4% usage, how many aren't considered to be "weather" pokemon who are generally used in support of weather teams? Landorus-T, Skarmory, Gengar, Salamence, Conkeldurr, Hydreigon. All HO pokemon except Lando-T who generally shows up on sand. Everything else is there because it supports either rain, sun or sand teams. There are incredibly good pokemon out there who will never see the light of day in this metagame because they can't cut it in the weather - Bronzong, Azelf, Chandelure, Empoleon, Snorlax, Virizion, etc. This is not to say that these pokemon "have to be" OU or don't have flaws, but all of them clearly have the potential to be great but can't take advantage of a particular weather and as such get shafted (although props to Trinitrotoluene for making the baller SubPetaya Empoleon team, that was awesome).

Simply put, it is a sad state of affairs to see such a large section of the available pokemon cut out by virtue of the weather, and I think that rain is uniquely the cause of this (debates about sun in rain's absence are silly, but I for one don't think it would be nearly as centralizing as rain, it has way too many vulnerabilities and it's abusers all share several common weaknesses unlike the variety offered by rain). It's frankly tiresome to see the same twenty pokemon on every single ladder team. Random teams which innovate are lauded, but the fact that Kidogo can use NP/BP Celebi and be hailed as a visionary just shows how centralized the game is - that's not even a different pokemon, just a different set! (Kidogo I think you're awesome and your team is awesome and don't mean to take a shot at you, your RMT just happens to be a good example of this which is on the front page right now. No hard feelings I hope.)

What is additionally lost within all of the "innovative teams" is that any innovation that occurs occurs on the level of different pokemon within existing strategies, rather than creation of new strategies. Anecdotal, yes, but what are the only team archetypes accepted to be viable?
Rain HO, Rain Stall, Sun Offense, Sun Stall(?), Sand Stall, Sand HO, Sand Semi-Stall, Weatherless HO. (Hail Stall lives! Check the RMT in my sig!)
"Stall is dead" graces the front page of our OU forums. Every team in the OU RMT section is rain, sand or sun, and if it isn't the first comment is "you get 6-0ed by Keldeo". The only other truly unique strategies that I can think of are BP and TR, which are almost never seen at the top levels of play.
Moving the game away from a focus on weather MASSIVELY increases the potential for strategic innovation. When your six pokemon don't all have to benefit from the weather you are running there is a whole new world of strategy available to you.

This got slightly rambly at the end but I believe I have made enough of a point to open the floor for discussion. To summarize:
Rain teams are extremely threatening and extremely reliant on rain
The path of least resistance to neutralize this teambuilding threat is to use your own weather
This greatly constricts the number of "viable" pokemon/strategies
Variety should be our most important goal because it makes creativity and innovation possible, which are mostly dead in the current metagame

Hello jpw234, I'm pyjama456 and I'm going to be supporting Drizzle to stay in OU because since BW1, I really think that Drizzle doesn't deserve to be banned. There are stuff more broken than Drizzle in the current Metagame and those things would be even more broken if Drizzle gets banned.

I'd like to present a list of assumptions I'm going to make for ease of use when responding or attempting to understand where I'm coming from:
1. "Banning rain" only means banning Politoed (and any future pokemon with Drizzle). Politoed is not OU-worthy without Drizzle, so there shouldn't be complaints about inability to use Water Absorb Toed (lol). All your other rain toys are still available, just without the infinite rain.
Edit: yee has brought to my attention that we would likely simply ban the Drizzle ability, meaning that Water Absorb Politoed would indeed be legal. If this was the tipping point for anybody, there you go.
2. One of the biggest draws of simulated competitive pokemon (which removes the rewarding feeling of ownership and satisfaction you get from grinding a team to 100 on a cartridge) is the ability to create new and innovative strategies. At competitive levels, the fun of online pokemon largely comes from the search for the best possible strategy you can get out of six pokemon. Inventing or popularizing a new strategy is the pinnacle of this.

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1. Banning Drizzle doesn't only mean "banning" Politoed (as you said it, Water Absorb Politoed is not worthy-OU) but making things like Toxicroak, Tornadus, Gyarados, Vaporeon, Tentacruel etc useless. Stuff like Dragonite, Jirachi (Thunder), Kyurem would be less good and it would let things like Volcarona or Venusaur become too strong. Banning Drizzle wouldn't only mean banning 1 ability, it would have a huge impact on the Metagame and it would let Drought be more broken than it already is. When talking about banning Drizzle, we obviously have to talk about banning Drought. Sun is the best weather in my opinion and Rain Teams are needed to deal with Sun Teams since Sand Teams get their Tyranitar/Heatran trapped by Dugtrio and then Venusaur + Volcarona are unstoppable. Even Rain Teams have a hard time beating Sun Teams so this is just not possible to ban Drizzle without banning Drought and if we do so the Metagame would be extremely boring will the same stuff everywhere like Terrakion, Landorus etc.

2. I don't really understand why banning Drizzle would help to be more original in our Teambuilding. As I said it above, banning Drizzle would just let stuff be more broken and so everyone would use them. I often use Rain Teams and I can tell you that you can be really original and I think that you can be more original with a Rain than with a Sun or a Sand Team. Look, you can basically use almost everything on a Rain Team which isn't the case with a Sand or a Sun Team. Are you going to use Kyurem, Gyarados, Toxicroak, Tornadus, Dragonite, Volcarona etc on a Sand Team? No. I'm not saying you can't use them, of course you can but these things don't come immediately in mind when building a Sand Team and so people bring standard things like Terrakion + Landorus + Latias etc. With a Rain Team you can be original because there are things like Toxicroak or Azumarill that can be used.

1. Rain teams are highly reliant on rain to function.
This may seem tautological but is important to prove - in particular, sand teams aren't usually all that dependent on sand being up, so we shouldn't assume that rain teams are. And while there are some examples of rain teams who don't really care about the weather, on the whole this is not the case. The reason for this has to do with the benefits gained from rain, as opposed to those from sand or hail. Pokemon that benefit from rain do so in several ways:
1. They lose weaknesses, which improves their ability to take hits from a diversity of pokemon. Ferrothorn, Scizor, Forretress, etc.
2. They gain HP recovery, which improves their overall survivability. Tentacruel, Toxicroak, and defensive pokemon who would otherwise lose Lefties recovery from sand or hail.
3. They gain accuracy on their attacks, which improves their reliability offensively. Thundurus-T and electric friends, Tornadus, Dragonite, etc.
4. They gain power on water moves, which improves their wall-breaking ability. Keldeo, Starmie, Gyarados, etc.
Generally, the pokemon that end up in rain teams do so because they would gain a weakness without rain that makes them not so useful, and rain patches up that weakness in one of the above ways. Tentacruel doesn't spin on many non-rain teams, does it? This is true for rain offense - Thundurus-T loses reliable electric attacks, Keldeo becomes less frightening, etc. - and even more true for rain stall - FerroCruel is INFURIATING with rain up but quickly becomes much less intimidating with sand, sun or hail.

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What you're saying is true but doesn't prove why Drizzle should be banned. The FerroCruel core is indeed extremely good but extremely weak to Sand and Sun. I mean, Tentacruel is just useless and sucks when the Rain isn't up and this core is also extremely weak to stuff like Breloom, Terrakion, Landorus, Thundurus, Lati@s HP Fire etc. I know it's great and it can be seen as a broken core when you're using a Rain Team or a Weatherless Team since you can't remove the Rain but it's clearly not good against a Sun or a Sand Team. Tyranitar just doesn't care about Tentacruel and I know you'll think about Scald burn when reading this but you don't have to stay in with Tyranitar against Tentacruel, just set up the Sandstorm and switch.

I don't see why gaining HP recovery from Leftovers proves that Drizzle should be banned. Actually, the fact that Leftovers are cancelled by the Hail or the Sandstorm make them extremely annoying. But I obviously confirm the part about Toxicroak and Tentacruel but once again, those 2 suck if Rain isn't up.

It's true that moves like Hurricane and Thunder get 100% of accuracy with Rain up but it's also a bad thing when Rain isn't up since you have to rely on moves with either 50% (when Sun is up) or 70% of accuracy which is extremely bad. In addition, only a few Pokemon benefit from this gain of accuracy: Dragonite, Volcarona, Jirachi, Tornadus and Thundurus-T. Dragonite is almost never used with Hurricane and Thunder in the current Metagame and it's not the most threatening Set, I would rather face Volcarona in Rain than in Sun, Jirachi gets Body Slam or Thunderbolt so I don't really see the difference and Tornadus-I is UU.

Once again that's true that they gain power on Water Moves but it also can help the opponent. I mean, how many Pokemon have a Water Move in their Set on a Rain Team? Tentacruel and Politoed on Rain Stall and 3 on Rain Offense. Just look at gr8astard's Team in OST finals: Politoed / Jirachi / Garchomp / Keldeo / Celebi / Feraligatr. Only 3 Pokemon benefit from this boost on Water Moves like in 95% of Rain Offense. Did you think about the fact that it can help the opponent? Keldeo, Rotom-W, Lati@s, Starmie etc all these things are often used in Sand Team and they gain power on their Water Moves so I really don't think this gain power on Water Moves proves that Drizzle should be banned.

I have been using Weatherless Teams for a while now and I even picked #1 on PO Ladder twice with a Weatherless Team even with Tornadus-T and Deoxys-D unbanned. Creativity and variety are possible in this Metagame and I really dislike this argument of being restricted when building a Team because of Drizzle. I mean, are you really going to build a Team with no Water resistance? Remember guys in DPP, everyone had at least 2 Starmie/Suicune checks and Drizzle didn't exist. Of course it's harder since Drizzle boosts Water Moves but that doesn't mean that you wouldn't bring stuff like Celebi, Rotom-W etc if Drizzle didn't exist. In addition, it seems that people think Celebi, Rotom-W etc are only used to check Rain Teams. That's wrong, really. Rotom-W is one of the most useful Pokemon in OU, Celebi can do whatever you want. You would bring those things even with Drizzle banned, trust me.

Last thing about Rain Teams. A well built Sand or Sun Team has absolutely no problem beating a Rain Team. Rain Stall vs Sand Stall: Sand wins, and you can trust me since I have been using Sand Semi Stall for 2 years. Sun Stall vs Rain Stall: Sun wins. Rain Offense vs Sand Offense: can go either way but it only depends on Team Matchup + how both players play but if the Rain Team wins it's absolutely not because Drizzle is broken. Sun Offense vs Rain Offense: Sun definitely has the advantage but the Rain Team can win though.

I definitely don't think that Drizzle should be banned, sure it has a great impact on the Metagame, sure it helps a lot of Pokemon but as I explained it, there are stuff more broken than Drizzle and Rain Teams are definitely not unbeatable and definitely not the best Teams of the Metagame.

Youtuber

Hello pyjama456, I'm deathmetaljunkie666, and at the risk of sounding like a humongous nerd, I will be supporting the banning of Drizzle from the BW2 OU metagame.

There are stuff more broken than Drizzle in the current Metagame and those things would be even more broken if Drizzle gets banned.

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Smogon doesn't refrain from banning things because of there are things more broken than the suspect in question or what might happen afterwards. For example, Latias was banned before Salamence in DPP, because Latias was considered broken even though many players found Mence to be the more dangerous of the two.

Banning Drizzle doesn't only mean "banning" Politoed (as you said it, Water Absorb Politoed is not worthy-OU) but making things like Toxicroak, Tornadus, Gyarados, Vaporeon, Tentacruel etc useless. Stuff like Dragonite, Jirachi (Thunder), Kyurem would be less good and it would let things like Volcarona or Venusaur become too strong. Banning Drizzle wouldn't only mean banning 1 ability, it would have a huge impact on the Metagame and it would let Drought be more broken than it already is. When talking about banning Drizzle, we obviously have to talk about banning Drought. Sun is the best weather in my opinion and Rain Teams are needed to deal with Sun Teams since Sand Teams get their Tyranitar/Heatran trapped by Dugtrio and then Venusaur + Volcarona are unstoppable. Even Rain Teams have a hard time beating Sun Teams so this is just not possible to ban Drizzle without banning Drought and if we do so the Metagame would be extremely boring will the same stuff everywhere like Terrakion, Landorus etc.

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This is a problem. We do not keep broken things in the metagame just because they check other (potentially) broken things. We also do not keep broken things in the metagame just because they make otherwise non-OU choices viable.

The problem with Drizzle isn't that it's too strong (it was at the beginning of BW but not anymore, since we bent over backwards to make sure that whatever we may have banned, it wasn't rain). I agree that Drought is ridiculous and deserves to be banned but keeping Drizzle in the metagame even though it is bad for the metagame (i.e. helps worse players beat better players - but more on this later) just because it helps keep Drought in line goes against Smogon policy.

banning Drizzle would just let stuff be more broken

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If other stuff is broken, we ban it as well. We shouldn't be afraid of banning things if the end result is a good metagame (which is, going by DougJustDoug's definitions of characteristics of a desirable metagame, one where the better player will, more often than not, beat the worse player through battling skill). By this logic, rain should be banned, as games with it involved have the winner decided more on team match-up than anything else. As you said yourself,

Last thing about Rain Teams. A well built Sand or Sun Team has absolutely no problem beating a Rain Team. Rain Stall vs Sand Stall: Sand wins, and you can trust me since I have been using Sand Semi Stall for 2 years. Sun Stall vs Rain Stall: Sun wins. Rain Offense vs Sand Offense: can go either way but it only depends on Team Matchup + how both players play but if the Rain Team wins it's absolutely not because Drizzle is broken. Sun Offense vs Rain Offense: Sun definitely has the advantage but the Rain Team can win though.

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This sort of (dis)advantage game is exactly what is so bad about rain. Even if the rain team loses, it's most likely because the rain team could not overcome its horrendous matchup, which is not how the winner of an ideal Pokemon game should be decided. I have lost count of how many times I have faced a rain team with my sand stall and just mindlessly won because the matchup was just about impossible to lose.

Rain may not be "broken" in the classic sense that it rolls over everything in its path with no thought required (which still happens fairly often, just not as much now that we've nerfed the shit out of it). However, aside from giving Pokemon absolutely ridiculous power boosts (Politoed's Specs Hydro Pump is stronger than Latios's Specs Draco Meteor...), it puts more emphasis on matchup than on actual battling skill, and that is why it deserves to be banned.

First of all: it is useless to theorymon about the state of the metagame post-Drizzle ban. The entire reason we are having this discussion is because rain massively distorts the metagame as is and so hypothesizing about whether or not sun would be broken absent rain is useless.
Second of all: Smogon's established ban policy makes this irrelevant. If we determine something is broken, we ban it, and then we deal with the consequences of the metagame that comes afterwards. If sun is broken in that metagame, we ban that too. "Something else will be broken" is not a valid argument for maintaining rain and is in fact a fallacious one. The current discussion is ONLY about whether or not rain should be in OU.

Next you responded to my first point, which outlined the different effects that rain has. However you seem to have missed the thrust of my argument. You said "FerroCruel is weak to sand and sun", "Tentacruel is useless and sucks when rain isn't up" and "it can be seen as a broken core...when you're using a Weatherless team".
I would like to make clear that this is exactly what my argument is. From the top of my original post: "The argument I will make is not about balance". We are in agreement that there are things you can do to counter rain teams. However, that is still a bad state of affairs.
I ask those reading to look to what Ojama has outlined as counters to rain teams. He says that FerroCruel is "clearly not good against a Sun or a Sand team". He says "A well built Sand or Sun team has absolutely no problem beating a Rain Team." He says that sand stall beats rain stall, sand offense beats rain offense, etc.This is true, and this is bad. See my second point in the original post - the path of least resistance toward beating rain is utilizing weather yourself. I have never disagreed that it is possible to stop FerroCruel by switching in Ninetales. But Ojama himself says that this core is scary when you are weatherless. Nothing that he says so far disagrees with the central point of the argument - allowing rain in the metagame creates a strong compulsion for any competitive team to use a weather in order to counteract its effects.

The weight behind my argument is that the overabundance of weather teams has two major negative effects.
1. It restricts the number of viable pokemon. If you are using a weather it doesn't make sense not to abuse it, and there are a limited number of pokemon who are in a position to take advantage of the benefits that weather brings.
2. It restricts the number of viable playstyles. This is the most important. Anybody can shoehorn different UU or NU pokemon, or underutilized sets into an established style. But there is a decided lack of diversity in regards to actual strategies for different teams. There is Weather Offense, Weather Stall, and Weatherless HO. That is a sad state of affairs, and banning rain would go a long way toward ending it.

Only one section of Ojama's post is, in my opinion, responsive to either of these claims. That's here:

2. I don't really understand why banning Drizzle would help to be more original in our Teambuilding. As I said it above, banning Drizzle would just let stuff be more broken and so everyone would use them. I often use Rain Teams and I can tell you that you can be really original and I think that you can be more original with a Rain than with a Sun or a Sand Team. Look, you can basically use almost everything on a Rain Team which isn't the case with a Sand or a Sun Team. Are you going to use Kyurem, Gyarados, Toxicroak, Tornadus, Dragonite, Volcarona etc on a Sand Team? No. I'm not saying you can't use them, of course you can but these things don't come immediately in mind when building a Sand Team and so people bring standard things like Terrakion + Landorus + Latias etc. With a Rain Team you can be original because there are things like Toxicroak or Azumarill that can be used.

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First off he talks about sun being more broken in rain's absence, I addressed that above. The next argument he makes is that Rain allows more room for originality and allows multiple different pokemon. Sorry, using Toxicroak or Azumarill doesn't automatically make your rain team unique. The four benefits that I outlined are the only way that a pokemon can take advantage of rain, and there are a limited number of pokemon that can take advantage of those benefits. In addition, there are many pokemon who are actively hurt by those restrictions (see - any type weak to Water, any bulky pokemon who now can't take boosted water attacks, etc). There is a fundamental limit on the number of viable pokemon you can use if you limit yourself to rain.

But even if Ojama's argument is correct, it still does not address my second, and more important point - that there is a restriction on the number of viable playstyles, which I believe is more important. Like I said, anybody can find a hidden rain gem or throw on some random unique set and be called "creative". BUT IT'S STILL A DAMN RAIN OFFENSE TEAM AND THERE'S A BILLION OF THEM. As long as rain remains in the metagame there will be no overarching strategic innovation, and since nobody has argued my original assumption that this is one of the primary benefits of playing online competitive pokemon, I think this is a strong and valid reason we should ban rain.

hello deathmetaljunkie666, i'm mushimaster16 and i will be expanding upon the arguments you made for banning drizzle in your above post, as well as creating some new arguments of my own and taking a more extreme position on the matter (as you shall soon see).

We do not keep broken things in the metagame just because they check other (potentially) broken things.

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i will disagree with you here on the grounds that kyurem-b was at least in part unbanned with the rationale that it will check rain and sun teams, what were considered (and still are) to be the two most "broken" playstyles in the current metagame. i will not deny that kyu-b was also partially unbanned because it was checked by many common threats, such as scizor and jirachi. however, if that was the only rationale behind its unbanning, it most likely would have stayed uber. we need to examine the entirety of the issue before making a decision on drizzle, since even if we are not technically supposed to vote on the metagame with and without x suspect, it is inevitable that we as human beings will take such opinions into consideration.

you'll see what i'm getting at here. i am, after all, in favor of drizzle being banned, so why would i argue that we need to consider how the metagame would be before and after drizzle? well, you answered it partially yourself. i'll quote bkc here:

If other stuff is broken, we ban it as well. We shouldn't be afraid of banning things if the end result is a good metagame (which is, going by DougJustDoug's definitions of characteristics of a desirable metagame, one where the better player will, more often than not, beat the worse player through battling skill). By this logic, rain should be banned, as games with it involved have the winner decided more on team match-up than anything else.

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now, if i may summarize bkc here, he is mainly stating that we must ban broken things regardless of the metagame's outcome. i agree that we should be banning based on the broken-ness of said pokemon, but part of a pokemon's broken-ness (e.g. politoed) is the metagame state it induces and how it impacts the metagame overall. hopefully my readers see what i'm getting at here. this is my announcement, if you will, that if suspect voters are afraid that by banning drizzle, sun will dominate the metagame, fearnot, because as bkc states quite explicitly: "if other stuff is broken, we will ban it as well". get it? so even if sun begins to dominate after rain is banned, then we ban sun as well; and if we continue to ban things that make the metagame worse, eventually we will arrive at the perfect metagame.

i will clarify the above argument here. essentially what we're doing here is employing both of the two types of banning (or two types of rationales behind banning), these types being 1) banning based on the pokemon itself being broken, and 2) banning based on the state of the metagame without said pokemon being better than the status quo. they're almost the same thing if you think about it, because broken pokemon are never healthy for a metagame, but 1 is only part of 2. however, if we ban using method 1, then we are essentially randomizing our metagame: we ban broken things, and that gives rise to more broken-ness. it is a neverending cycle that only determines the next thing that will be broken. if we ban using method 2, though, then we end up with a better metagame. by banning something that is considered by the majority to make the metagame worse, its absence therefore makes the metagame better. for example, if we decided to ban drizzle, it would improve the metagame in the long term, because even if sun became broken as a result of that drizzle ban, we would then ban drought, and then if another broken threat comes to be, we extinguish that as well. if we continue down this road i must emphasize that we will eventually arrive at a near perfect overused tier. if the metagame continues to improve after every ban, it is an inevitable outcome that it shall eventually reach its peak of excellence.

a brief note on the seemingly negative connotation of the word "ban": it really isn't a negative thing! some people have been known to justify keeping certain threats legal in overused because they are simply opposed to banning. part of the reason their arguments can sound convincing, despite their holding no water, is that the word ban carries an inherent negative connotation. however, the definition of the word is "to officially or legally prohibit". doesn't sound so bad anymore, does it? so don't be deterred from voting "ban" just because some people don't like how the word sounds and thus are in opposition to multiple bans. and that's another thing: multiple bans are not "bad" simply because they are bans in greater number. bans are not inherently good or bad; we make them so. once again, don't be swayed by the opposition's attempt to control the language of the argument, only focus on the arguments themselves. moving on,

This sort of (dis)advantage game is exactly what is so bad about rain. Even if the rain team loses, it's most likely because the rain team could not overcome its horrendous matchup, which is not how the winner of an ideal Pokemon game should be decided.

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bkc touches on one of the major issues here, which is that rain in general decreases the competitiveness of the metagame. personally, i have never made a rain team that wasn't matchup reliant in some way or another. it's almost as bad as sun in the degree to which it relies on team matchup. some rain teams are weak to rp landorus, some weak to sd scizor, some weak to dd gyarados. others beat such threats, but lose to others. when you bring a rain offense team into battle, you pray that your opponent does not have one of the pokemon or playstyles which, if utilized correctly, beats you 100% of the time, and the opponent is praying the same thing that you are. it's like sun teams more than i'd like to believe in that regard. just as some sun teams lose to hippowdon + tyranitar or skarmory + jellicent, rain teams lose to things they're made to lose to and beat what they're prepared to beat. when teambuilding, you choose what you know you're gonna lose to and what you're gonna beat, and then hit find battle and hope for the best. there is zero skill involved in the entire process. if matchup is against you, you lose, and if it's not you win. i've found that the only games actually decided by skill when using rain offense are against other rain offense teams of a similar build, just as when i use sun, the only games decided by skill are against other sun teams. it decreases overall competitiveness of pokemon and makes the bw2 ou metagame one that's not really worth playing.

Rain may not be "broken" in the classic sense that it rolls over everything in its path with no thought required

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while i agree that it doesn't necessarily "roll over" everything like it did in the swift swim + drizzle days, most games with rain involved are still no contest. this is where my extreme position comes into play, if you want to call it that. look to the past and check out how many times we've nerfed rain. first is manaphy, a threat that would have stayed in ou without rain, but with that hydration support was massively broken and got banned as a result. next was drizzle + swift swim, a combination that was nearly unbeatable by other offensive teams. again, without drizzle, it's not even an issue. third is thundurus, if you want to count that, who was still broken without rain, but who with it was even more overpowered. and just recently we got rid of tornadus-t, one of rain's most popular abusers, as well as unbanning kyurem-b, a pokemon that would supposedly "check" rain (note: it really hasn't). and where are we now? even after all of these attempts to nerf rain, it's still the most dominant playstyle in the ou metagame. i believe it's time we finally got to the root of the problem; not manaphy, not swift swim, not thundurus, not tornadus-t, but drizzle itself, and the carrier of such a plague on the metagame, a pokemon called politoed. now the toed in itself isn't all that great, but the benefits it brings to the pokemon surrounding it make it shocking to me that it's still legal. first, all water type attacks get a 50% power boost. that's right, politoed's hydro pump is stronger than latios's draco meteor. the benefits this gives to rain teams are hard to see as tangible things, but there are a few examples, most notably keldeo's huge boost in power, which allows it to run a harshly efficient choice scarf set and ohko practically anything that doesn't resist its stab surf/hydro pump. as if keldeo wasn't strong enough. next we have the fact that fire moves' power is cut in half, meaning such pokemon as scizor, ferrothorn, and jirachi are free to wreak havoc underneath rain without worry of a stray hp fire or fire punch popping them for massive damage. this is a great boon to most rain teams and is one of the reasons the three pokemon i listed above are still so dominant today. third, we have the accuracy increases, with hurricane and thunder's accuracy both increasing to 100% under the rain. this allows such abusers as thundurus-t, tornadus-i, dragonite, etc. to use their most pokemon stab attacks without fear of missing, and adds a whole new element of broken to the rain playstyle. finally, we have the miscellaneous benefits, such as rain dish's extra hp recovery per turn under drizzle, which by itself makes tentacruel arguably the best spinner in ou. all-in-all, the amount of useful secondary effects that rain brings to the table makes it more than worth the detriment of having to use politoed, a rather mediocre pokemon, on every rain-oriented team.

i'll repeat myself: the continued domination of rain as a playstyle over the bw overused metagame, despite four different attempts to nerf it, clearly indicates its worthiness to be banned. arguing otherwise is merely ignoring the empirical proof.

Hi deathmetaljunkie666, i am alexwolf (fuck nicknames), and i would like to argue about some of the points you made:

Smogon doesn't refrain from banning things because of there are things more broken than the suspect in question or what might happen afterwards. For example, Latias was banned before Salamence in DPP, because Latias was considered broken even though many players found Mence to be the more dangerous of the two.

This is a problem. We do not keep broken things in the metagame just because they check other (potentially) broken things. We also do not keep broken things in the metagame just because they make otherwise non-OU choices viable.

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This is true, but to a degree. We ban Pokemon to reach an ideal metagame, or at least one that reaches as close as possible an ideal one. This means that in each metagame that we want to fix, time is a realistic concern and should be taken into consideration. So in this case, a player should opt to ban broken things that check other broken things only if he thinks that there is enough time to ban all the potentially broken stuff in the horizon. Otherwise, we will just be jumping from an unbalanced metagame to another, making all effort meaningless. So if a player believes that rain and sun are broken and that after they are gone the metagame will be fine, it is absolutely justifiable to push for their ban, as long as he believes that we have enough time until X&Y. I know that at this point i am not arguing against a Drizzle ban, but i just wanted to make sure that everyone understands that time is a reasonable argument against banning Drizzle, if someone believes that we won't have enough time to reach to a balanced metagame before X&Y comes. Even if for some players the metagame we have now is not balanced, the fear of OU becoming even worse if we unsettle the delicate balance of weathers that exists now, without having the time to fix it, is a very good reason to not want a Drizzle ban.

Now let me explain why i don't believe Drizzle is broken (and i don't believe that anything else is broken in the current metagame) by arguing with some of the things you said.

By this logic, rain should be banned, as games with it involved have the winner decided more on team match-up than anything else.

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This is the main argument that i have seen the pro-ban Drizzle camp make, and this is the main part where we disagree. You believe that games where at least one rain team exists are going to be very match-up based, even more so than skill based, and this is why you want them banned. Have you considered the possibility that reliance to match-up evens out in the long run and that skill indeed plays the bigger role in determining which wins? I can accept that rain teams have a very strong advantage against some kind of teams and a very strong disadvantage against some other. But it can be argued that the games which are won due to match-up will be lost due to match-up too in the long run, judging the overall ability of a player to win on his skill on less match-up based games and even on a few very match-up based games (a player can still win those, but it is very hard).

Also have you considered the possibility that the increased match-up reliance that we face in this generation is not a product of rain, but of the increased number of threats that each team has to account for, the diminish of reliance on counters, and the significant rise in the importance of checks? You believe that rain teams make games very match-up based because they will either dominate the other team or get dominated, and i ask why do you think this happens?

Let's take for example the example of rain offense vs sand stall. One of the biggest reasons as to why sand has the upper hand here is that Hippowdon is much more resilient due to reliable recovery and better defensive stats, meaning that it will last long as long as it is supported by a solid defensive core. Another reason is that sand teams can spin relatively easy against rain offense, which usually lack a spinblocker, while rain teams often struggle to get past Jellicent and get easily worn down by hazards. And because rain teams rely a lot on their weather to win, if the weather war is not on their favor the same will happen with the game. If you break down what i said into details, you will notice that this match-up is so much in sand's favor because rain lacks the tools it needs to deal with some threats of the metagame. They can't easily spin against Jellicent and they can't easily get past of Hippowdon. This means that rain offense teams are just a victim of the problem i mentioned before, which is the increased amount of threats BW and BW2 have brought, both offensive and defensive, making covering everything impossible. There will be things against which every team will lose, and will lose badly. Rain chooses to have a very strong match-up against many types of teams, taking advantage of the huge team support that Politoed offers, but has to live with the fact that sand stall will be a trouble for them. Of 'course the rain team can pack Choice Specs Gothitelle or Nasty Plot Thundurus-T, which will significantly help it against sand stall teams but will hurt its performance against other team types. This shows very well how teams in 5th gen can't cover anything and they must chose what they want to cover and what they want to be weak to.

If we banned Drizzle why do you believe that the reliance on match-up will go away? Many strategies will still have big roadblocks to them and teams would still be unable to account for everything. While it is true that some Pokemon that were threats in a Drizzle meta won't be anymore, don't forget that threats that didn't see any use due to Drizzle will become viable again, meaning that the number of threats each team has to account for won't necessarily change drastically.

So why do you blame Drizzle for the increased reliance on match-up that we experience in 5th gen, and not the new threats that 5th gen brought?

We ban Pokemon to reach an ideal metagame, or at least one that reaches as close as possible an ideal one. This means that in each metagame that we want to fix, time is a realistic concern and should be taken into consideration. So in this case, a player should opt to ban broken things that check other broken things only if he thinks that there is enough time to ban all the potentially broken stuff in the horizon. Otherwise, we will just be jumping from an unbalanced metagame to another, making all effort meaningless. So if a player believes that rain and sun are broken and that after they are gone the metagame will be fine, it is absolutely justifiable to push for their ban, as long as he believes that we have enough time until X&Y. I know that at this point i am not arguing against a Drizzle ban, but i just wanted to make sure that everyone understands that time is a reasonable argument against banning Drizzle, if someone believes that we won't have enough time to reach to a balanced metagame before X&Y comes. Even if for some players the metagame we have now is not balanced, the fear of OU becoming even worse if we unsettle the delicate balance of weathers that exists now, without having the time to fix it, is a very good reason to not want a Drizzle ban.

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Aldaron said that time isn't a concern and shouldn't be used as a justification for anything. Which is true. The BW2 OU metagame will still be relevant for a long, long time after XY is released, so no, "we don't have enough time" is a shitty reason to not want to ban Drizzle.

You believe that games where at least one rain team exists are going to be very match-up based, even more so than skill based, and this is why you want them banned. Have you considered the possibility that reliance to match-up evens out in the long run and that skill indeed plays the bigger role in determining which wins?

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Reliance on match-up does not "even out in the long run". It stays the entire game. I don't even know where you're getting this from.

I can accept that rain teams have a very strong advantage against some kind of teams and a very strong disadvantage against some other. But it can be argued that the games which are won due to match-up will be lost due to match-up too in the long run

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Nope. If you really believe this, please show me a game involving Drizzle where the ridiculous matchup decided to even itself out after x amount of turns.

Also have you considered the possibility that the increased match-up reliance that we face in this generation is not a product of rain, but of the increased number of threats that each team has to account for, the diminish of reliance on counters, and the significant rise in the importance of checks? You believe that rain teams make games very match-up based because they will either dominate the other team or get dominated, and i ask why do you think this happens?

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I have never said the increased matchup reliance this generation is solely due to rain. However, rain is certainly one of the most prominent reasons, because games it's involved in are basically determined by who brought which team.

Let's take for example the example of rain offense vs sand stall. One of the biggest reasons as to why sand has the upper hand here is that Hippowdon is much more resilient due to reliable recovery and better defensive stats, meaning that it will last long as long as it is supported by a solid defensive core. Another reason is that sand teams can spin relatively easy against rain offense, which usually lack a spinblocker, while rain teams often struggle to get past Jellicent and get easily worn down by hazards. And because rain teams rely a lot on their weather to win, if the weather war is not on their favor the same will happen with the game. If you break down what i said into details, you will notice that this match-up is so much in sand's favor because rain lacks the tools it needs to deal with some threats of the metagame. They can't easily spin against Jellicent and they can't easily get past of Hippowdon. This means that rain offense teams are just a victim of the problem i mentioned before, which is the increased amount of threats BW and BW2 have brought, both offensive and defensive, making covering everything impossible. There will be things against which every team will lose, and will lose badly. Rain chooses to have a very strong match-up against many types of teams, taking advantage of the huge team support that Politoed offers, but has to live with the fact that sand stall will be a trouble for them. Of 'course the rain team can pack Choice Specs Gothitelle or Nasty Plot Thundurus-T, which will significantly help it against sand stall teams but will hurt its performance against other team types. This shows very well how teams in 5th gen can't cover anything and they must chose what they want to cover and what they want to be weak to.

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You just outlined everything that is wrong with the rain-induced match-up syndrome. Thanks.

Also there's a difference between choosing what you want to be weak to and choosing what you're going to outright lose to.

If we banned Drizzle why do you believe that the reliance on match-up will go away?

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No, but it will certainly be greatly reduced and skill will be more prominent as a decider of a battle's winner than it currently is.

Many strategies will still have big roadblocks to them and teams would still be unable to account for everything. While it is true that some Pokemon that were threats in a Drizzle meta won't be anymore, don't forget that threats that didn't see any use due to Drizzle will become viable again, meaning that the number of threats each team has to account for won't necessarily change drastically.

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"if we ban this then that happens so we can't ban anything! god forbid the metagame changes!"

So why do you blame Drizzle for the increased reliance on match-up that we experience in 5th gen, and not the new threats that 5th gen brought?

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I don't entirely blame Drizzle, and I never have, please stop putting words in my mouth. It is largely but not entirely Drizzle's fault. The main other culprit is Drought but that's a different discussion...

Hi, I am XxThe_Shiny_HumexX and I am not yet convinced either way. In this post, however, I will attempt to conceive a stronger conclusion that asserts that rain should be banned. My method will be to work backwards from my conclusion to most clearly show my argument's moves.

Rather than assert that Rain decreases diversity of strategy/pokemon and thus undermines the fun aspect of competitive pokemon (as jpw234 argues), I will instead ask whether or not Rain undermines the competitive aspect of competitive pokemon.

The reason I am exploring this argument is because I believe that if a sound argument can be made concluding that rain is a detriment to competitiveness, no one in the community could ever hold that rain should not be banned. Where as the conclusion that Rain makes pokemon less fun, even if proven, may not be sufficient to convince the community to ban it.

First I will describe some things in order to be clear, you may call these my assumptions:

1. It is thought by some that in a competitive situation the player with the most skill will win the highest percentage of the time. An alternate formulation of this would be to say: In a competitive situation where 2 players face off, the player of greatest skill should win a significantly higher percentage of the time.
2. Banning rain means banning the ability Drizzle.
3. Winning a match with a counter-team or anti-team does not indicate that a player has a higher level of skill than the opponent who was counter-teamed.

So now I will work backwards from my conclusion: Rain leads to a situation in which the player of greatest skill does not win the highest percentage of the time.

1. If it is the case that rain creates a situation in which team match-up is the greatest factor determining victory, than rain contributes to an uncompetitive situation. When I say 'team match-up is the greatest factor' I mean that in a match-up between two players of competent skill level, the composition of the teams will determine the winner a very large portion of the time. For example, pro-banners have argued that as it stands team match-up is often insurmountable. When they say this, they mean that when 2 skilled players face-off, there is no opportunity for the player with a disadvantage to outplay the opponent, as the competent opponent can merely make the safest moves and avoid choking away their advantage. They mean to assert that the skill factor of both players is negated by the overwhelming determinance of team match-up. Where skill is negated, the player of highest skill does not win the greatest percentage of the time. SO if rain contributes to this phenomenon, it contributes to uncompetitiveness.

Working backwards, I (as proxy for the pro-ban side) must now show one of two things:

1. Rain creates a situation in which team match-up becomes the greatest factor determining victory.

2. Banning rain would create a situation in which team match-up would be less of a factor determining victory.

This will be the area where most of the debate in this thread must take place. I, as a neutral party (I would prefer to ban Keldeo and maybe one or two others and be done with it, but that is not the subject of this thread), will leave the proof of these last two points to the pro-ban side.

If either of these last two points are proven (if they can be proven at all), I think that no one can reasonably maintain a pro-rain position.

summary of the line of argument: If rain leads to a situation in which team match-up is the greatest or greater determinant of victory in a match, then rain makes pokemon less competitive and should be banned.

hi. im tacofag123. here are my thoughts on rain and weather in general.

a lot of people may know me as the guy that doesn't like BW OU -- and it's true. i find the metagame stagnant, boring, and often a case of team matchup rather than overall skill. and i do feel that rain contributes to this a good deal. it forces overpreparation and often times the list of things that can truly counter some rain threats is incredibly small. take, for example, specs keldeo in the rain. vs full spdef calm celebi. it does 538 Atk vs 328 Def & 404 HP (120 Base Power): 158 - 186 (39.11% - 46.04%) in the rain with hydro pump. that's pretty ridiculous for literally the best pokemon to take special water attacks in the game. as you can surmise, the rest of OU fairs a lot worse. for another example of a common pokemon, specs rain keldeo does 538 Atk vs 216 Def & 323 HP (120 Base Power): 240 - 283 (74.30% - 87.62%) to other keldeo. even resistances can just be plowed through with the power.

this illustrates the power of keldeo, but what about rain in general? the fact of the matter that rain facilitating this kind of power is too good for the metagame. when the conditions exist that: keldeo (or any rain sweeper, really; keldeo is just the most obviously broken) comes out, it will get a KO, something is seriously wrong. this is just inherently hard to counter when even resistances can get plowed through (see: rotomw to check keldeo, scarf jirachi to check tornadus, ferrothorn to beat rotomw) via high powered STAB attacks or a good support movepool. even worse is when many rain sweepers excel outside of rain, with their main STAB annihilating weather changers.

so the crazy power of rain sweepers being established, imagine if you DIDN'T carry a weather changer. imagine if you couldn't prevent that keldeo from 2hkoing your whole team with specs surf, if tornadus was allowed to spam hurricane freely. thus, you will be hard pressed to have any kind of momentum unless you either pack an incredibly anti-rain team (jellicent, jirachi, celebi, latias, etc) or a weather starter. any "standard" team is forced to play on the back foot the entire game vs a well built rain team. once momentum is lost, it's incredibly hard to gain it back because you are always reacting to their offense. it can be argued that the same can be said of playing vs garchomp when using a garchomp weak team (insert any threat here), there is no other threat that forces you to overprepare so much, and failing that force you to overcome a team matchup as much as rain does.

Hi, I'm pyjamallamamentaltrauma678, I believe rain should be banned and I'm here to share my thoughts on why.

As Lavos Spawn has pointed out, since the dawn of BW OU we've all been scrambling to nerf rain as much as possible, and yet it's still widely considered as the most broken weather. Rain is just too good, a 50% increase in the power of water moves is ridiculous, it not only restricts teambuilding, but makes rain way too powerful. in the rain a Pokemon like Keldeo, who is faster than the majority of the metagame, can 2HKO even the very best defensive answers to it with the specs set, and the scarf set forces even the most offensive of teams to bring some sort of defensive answer or a weather inducer, usually both, to even stand a chance. Keldeo is just one of the many examples of rain threats that heavily restrict teambuilding to the point where a select few Pokemon are found on every well built team, not because they're good, but because they're pretty much essential.

Many have made this next point in their own posts, but it just can't be stressed enough; the result of a match shouldn't be dictated by team matchup, but by the skill of player. The three biggest factors that go into deciding the result of a match are team matchup, skill, and hax, there's nothing that can be done about hax without messing with the game mechanics, but we can remove team matchup or at least heavily decrease its effect on the match's result. One of the biggest steps to doing so is banning rain, most team matchups are currently just too heavily reliant on what you and your opponent's teams have problems with and whether or not one of you has one of those big threats. Rain is easily one of the most difficult styles to beat, and you need to over prepare for it to have a good matchup against it, which always results in your team being too weak to something else or simply not being very viable. If we simply remove rain from the equation then we can invest more team resources into checking other threats, making bad team matchups less common, and increasing the effect skill has on match's outcome.

Aldaron said that time isn't a concern and shouldn't be used as a justification for anything. Which is true. The BW2 OU metagame will still be relevant for a long, long time after XY is released, so no, "we don't have enough time" is a shitty reason to not want to ban Drizzle.

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Regardless of what Aldaron said, the worry of breaking a metagame that we won't have the time to fix is a legitimate concern, from a logical standpoint. Don't focus on this point a lot, as it's not even in the main list of reasons that i don't want to see Drizzle banned. I just said this to back up every user that finds time to be an important factor as to why he doesn't want to band Drizzle.

Reliance on match-up does not "even out in the long run". It stays the entire game. I don't even know where you're getting this from.

Nope. If you really believe this, please show me a game involving Drizzle where the ridiculous matchup decided to even itself out after x amount of turns.

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I am not talking about a game, i am talking about many games. I am just taking into consideration that the factor called match-up reliance may not be such a big one in the long run, because similar to hax, it's a two sided coin. There are good match-ups and there are bad match-ups too. So, what i am saying is that in the long run, the sum of games that were very reliant to match-up may not be as many as you think, provided that good and bad match-ups even out. For example, let's say you had a team and battled 100 games with it. You won 35 games due to very good match-up and lost 20 for the same reasons. This means that out of the 55 games that were very reliant on match-up, 40 of them even out and equal to 0, leaving only 15 games very reliant on match-up out of 100 games. Of 'course this is not a real example, i just put it there to explain what i mean.

I have never said the increased matchup reliance this generation is solely due to rain. However, rain is certainly one of the most prominent reasons, because games it's involved in are basically determined by who brought which team.

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I never said that you said this. I was asking you why you believe that rain is one of the prominent reasons. I find threats such as Terrakion, Keldeo, Thundurus-T, and Jirachi equally annoying and hard to prepare for when teambuilding.

You just outlined everything that is wrong with the rain-induced match-up syndrome. Thanks.

Also there's a difference between choosing what you want to be weak to and choosing what you're going to outright lose to.

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I did this to show you how ''rain creates the match-up reliance'' can be translated to ''Hippowdon and Jellicent trouble rain teams'' in the case of rain offense vs stall. By expressing it this way, you can see that you identify the problem better and it becomes easier to deal with. As i said earlier, rain offense is perfectly capable of using Specs Gothitelle or Nasty Plot Thundurus-T in order to have much more of a fitghing chance against sand stall and make this match-up much less desperate. Just because the cookie-cutter rain teams are troubled by the classic sand stall doesn't meant that all rain teams are. It's up to the player to decide how much match-up reliant he wants his games to be. If he hates very match-up reliant games then he can make many teams that have a decent match-up against most team archetypes, and if he doesn't care then he can use your standard rain or sun offense team. As you said yourself there is a differnce between choosing what you want to be weak to and choosing what you are going to outright lose to, and it's up to the player to decide which of the two he will choose.

"if we ban this then that happens so we can't ban anything! god forbid the metagame changes!"

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. I never said that we shouldn't ban anything. I asked you to explain me why the game will become less match-up reliant without Drizzle. Why do you think that whatever strategy/ies becomes the dominant one in a Drizzle-less metagame won't do the same? I am asking this, because when your propose a solution you must have an idea of how this solution will fix the problem. Not liking the metagame as it is now and blaming Drizzle is fine as long as it supported with good arguments (and it is), but why do you believe that a Drizzle-less metagame will be so much less match-up reliant compared to this one? Especially when, as i explained earlier, the match-up reliance that Drizzle creates can be translated to certain threats that rain is weak and strong against. Why the team-type that will be the most dominant in a Drizzle-less metagame won't be very strong against some threats and team-types and very weak against some others, similarly to rain and sun teams?

I don't entirely blame Drizzle, and I never have, please stop putting words in my mouth. It is largely but not entirely Drizzle's fault. The main other culprit is Drought but that's a different discussion...

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I never said that you blame entirely Drizzle for this.

fat Bad Ass said:

a lot of people may know me as the guy that doesn't like BW OU -- and it's true. i find the metagame stagnant, boring, and often a case of team matchup rather than overall skill. and i do feel that rain contributes to this a good deal. it forces overpreparation and often times the list of things that can truly counter some rain threats is incredibly small. take, for example, specs keldeo in the rain. vs full spdef calm celebi. it does 538 Atk vs 328 Def & 404 HP (120 Base Power): 158 - 186 (39.11% - 46.04%) in the rain with hydro pump. that's pretty ridiculous for literally the best pokemon to take special water attacks in the game. as you can surmise, the rest of OU fairs a lot worse. for another example of a common pokemon, specs rain keldeo does 538 Atk vs 216 Def & 323 HP (120 Base Power): 240 - 283 (74.30% - 87.62%) to other keldeo. even resistances can just be plowed through with the power.

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I won't discuss about the metagame being stagnant and boring as this doesn't directly correlate to any of the reasons we ban things. I will talk about your comment that rain contributes a great deal to the big amount of match-up reliance that exists in the metagame.

You say that the list of things that can counter some rain threats is incredibly small. You mentioned Specs Keldeo so i will focus on this one. You focused your argument in Keldeo's power, posting a calc vs Celebi to showcase its power. This calc is of 'course impressing, but tbh i have stopped getting amazed by calcs in 5th gen, or at least when their only point is to prove how powerful some Pokemon are. Power alone means nothing in this metagame, as we all know from Pokemon such as Chandelure and Darmanitan, which are even stronger than Specs Keldeo (under their respective weather of 'course). So except from power, a Pokemon needs a combination of those: the typing and the stats to switch into relatively easy as well as take priority, the Speed needed to threaten offensive teams, and a certain amount of resilience to passive damage (SR, sand, being able to not rely on LO or have abilities that nullify it). So, as we can see, Keldeo has most of those traits, and what Drizzle does is enhance one of those traits, namely its power, to levels that aren't even unheard of in OU. So why are we blaming Drizzle for making Keldeo so good in OU, especially when the only trait that is enhanced by Drizzle, power, is not even something that OU has never dealt with before?

About the match-up reliance and the overall huge power of rain that many people have talked about in this thread, here are my views. I never find it very hard to prepare for rain teams when teambuilding. Celebi, Amoonguss, Rotom-W, Kyurem(-B), Lati@s, Ferrothorn, Gastrodon, and Jellicent are all excellent Pokemon that can fit in many types of teams and are very good ways to hold back rain teams. Of 'course only one of them can't hold back a whole playstyle, but any combination of those can put enough pressure to them to give to your team breathing room to react and go on the offensive too. Imo, there are a lot of tools for players to deal with rain, and rain isn't even one of my main troubles when teambuilding. Keldeo is a problem for a lot of my offensive teams, but as i said earlier, i don't get why Drizzle gets the blame for Keldeo's overall excellent combination of traits that make it so good in OU.

As for the match-up reliance, i don't see it as much as it is implied, basically because i am careful when teambuilding. As i said earlier, it's up to a player's choice whether or not his teams, even those that revolve around ran and sun, will be very reliant on match-up or not. I have made many rain teams that have a decent fighting chance against sand stall, while only having big weaknesses to certain threats and not to whole playstyles. Of 'course if thread A troubles my team, which is found often in playstyle X, my team is going to have a trouble against said playstyle, but this doesn't translate to match-up reliance but to weakness to certain threats. It just happens that many common threats are found in rain or sun, two playstyles that were introduced in 5th gen. The concept that we knew in other gens still remains: every team has certain threats it is weak to, as not everything can be covered. the difference in this gen is that some of those threats are commonly found in rain and sun, and thus weather takes the blame.

Anyway, i know that this comes down to personal preference, but i always found the statement ''games that involve rain or sun are very match-up reliant'' somewhat empty of meaning. If a player doesn't want to play match-up based games then he can build a team that takes care of this, and even sun and rain teams, especially rain. Many people have said that rain is a versatile weather, and i fully agree with this. And because of this versatility, rain has a ton of option to use and get past its common weaknesses and counters. If this means being weak to other things then fine, as if you really prefer less match-up based games this should be a price you should be willing to pay. I know that match-up reliance exists, but as long as the player has the tools to make it not such an important factor in games (or at least not as important as skill), i don't see any problem with Drizzle in the metagame.

Youtuber

I did this to show you how ''rain creates the match-up reliance'' can be translated to ''Hippowdon and Jellicent trouble rain teams'' in the case of rain offense vs stall. By expressing it this way, you can see that you identify the problem better and it becomes easier to deal with. As i said earlier, rain offense is perfectly capable of using Specs Gothitelle or Nasty Plot Thundurus-T in order to have much more of a fitghing chance against sand stall and make this match-up much less desperate. Just because the cookie-cutter rain teams are troubled by the classic sand stall doesn't meant that all rain teams are. It's up to the player to decide how much match-up reliant he wants his games to be. If he hates very match-up reliant games then he can make many teams that have a decent match-up against most team archetypes, and if he doesn't care then he can use your standard rain or sun offense team. As you said yourself there is a differnce between choosing what you want to be weak to and choosing what you are going to outright lose to, and it's up to the player to decide which of the two he will choose.

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You cannot dismiss the matchup issue by saying "if you don't want to win/lose on matchup then don't bring a matchup-prone team" because it goes both ways. What if the other guy brings one of these teams that either slaughters or gets slaughtered based on what his opponent has?

I never said that we shouldn't ban anything. I asked you to explain me why the game will become less match-up reliant without Drizzle. Why do you think that whatever strategy/ies becomes the dominant one in a Drizzle-less metagame won't do the same? I am asking this, because when your propose a solution you must have an idea of how this solution will fix the problem. Not liking the metagame as it is now and blaming Drizzle is fine as long as it supported with good arguments (and it is), but why do you believe that a Drizzle-less metagame will be so much less match-up reliant compared to this one? Especially when, as i explained earlier, the match-up reliance that Drizzle creates can be translated to certain threats that rain is weak and strong against. Why the team-type that will be the most dominant in a Drizzle-less metagame won't be very strong against some threats and team-types and very weak against some others, similarly to rain and sun teams?

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First of all, let's not pretend that the majority of games with Drizzle involved aren't decided from team preview! Denial isn't going to get us anywhere. Drizzle basically depends on having a good matchup. If it's a good one, it wins easily, if it's bad, it loses horribly. By "improving your matchup", you basically go from auto-losing to auto-winning, not having a better shot at beating your opponent through outplaying him. For example, most rain teams brutally lose to sun, unless the rain team is packing Dugtrio - if it does, then it wins ridiculously easily, unless there is a Shed Shell Ninetales, in which case it's back to brutally losing. Can you see how the entire outcomes of these games are being decided on pre-battle selection? We do not want this in our ideal metagame. We want the guy who plays better to win. We do not want the idiot who makes his pre-battle preparations bycounter-styling his opponent to make sure he has a ridiculously good matchup to win. Obviously team matchup will always be a factor in Pokemon, but it should never be so ridiculous to the point where games are literally being decided on the teams brought.

Drizzle and Drought are the abusable weathers. The guys running these teams wouldn't look twice at Politoed or Ninetales if it weren't for their abilities. They are the most important Pokemon on their team; if they go down, the game is as good as over. These entire games revolve around killing 1 Pokemon. Be it through lures, trappers, whatever, once you kill that one Pokemon, you've as good as won the game. Sand (and lol hail) don't have this problem because sand teams aren't abusing their weather to the point that they completely crumble without their inducer. They're more focused on playing a real game of Pokemon - one where you achieve your goal by killing all six of your opponent's mons, not one involving sun/rain where you focus on killing one mon and then let your team do the rest of the work for you. Look at any good ADV/DPP team. Do they focus on killing the one mon that prevents them from being ridiculously abusable and noob-friendly? No, they work together as a cohesive unit. Rain/sun teams are as follows: kill the other weather inducer and abuse the shit out of your own weather until you win. That shit does not belong in an ideal metagame. It promotes lazy play and is the main reason why "BW (BAN ME PLEASE)" are often trashed when trying to play past generations, because in RBY/GSC/ADV/DPP, there aren't any ridiculously easy pick-up-and-win methods these players who are used to steamrolling their poor opponents with unfairly strong tactics can use to bullshit their wins.

Rain also limits diversity. Where the hell did Conkeldurr go? What about Reuniclus? Anyone seen Infernape lately? The list of mons who were kicked into obscurity by rain's brutal power goes on forever. If you're not abusing weather (sun/rain teams are very limited in what they can run and still be effective), you are bending over backwards to make sure you don't get rolled the hell over by it, and the methods required to do that aren't exactly extensive. To stomach rain-boosted Hydro Pumps, you need at least two water resists, one of which needs incredibly heavy amounts of special defense, as well as a weather inducer of your own. You're not forced to do this, of course, but by not doing so you're putting yourself at a ridiculous disadvantage.

OK, discussion is getting lop-sided here; it's essentially 2 pro-Drizzle vs 8 anti-Drizzle (the remianing 2 are undoubtedly anti-Drizzle). Ojama and especially alexwolf are holding their side of the fort quite well, but as per kd24, we need to even this out. As an OU mod, I'll chip in to reinforce the dissenting pro-Drizzle side.

Creativity:

One of the arguments that have been made by anti-Drizzle: Rain is a restricting force that stifles creativity. However, as a player who has seen this game of Pokemon evolve from RBY to BW2, I can clearly say that BW2 is one of the most diverse generations out there, with plenty of room for innovation. SD Feraligatr, BP Celebi, Sash Tyranitar, EB Keldeo, Double Dance Landorus-T, Sub / Scarf Kyurem-B, Cresselia in Sun, the new Jirachi sets, the various Custap leads, and even the return of Conkeldurr and Reuinclus in SPL, Superstars or Smogon Tours. All of these are recent trends that indicates that BW2 is still a vibrant metagame with discoveries and innovations still to be made even after all this time. And do not doubt that weather is an integral part of this metagame's diversity and creativity that is unprecedented by older generations. This metagame has a good dose of rain, sun, sand, weatherless, and even hail. The teams tend to lean towards the offensive side, thanks to juggernauts such as Landorus-I, but the success of many defensive teams that are shared by our competitive players are a testament to how even defensive approaches are available.

Now anti-Drizzle players claim that Rain stifles creativity, and banning Rain would somehow make this problem go away. However, I fail to see that. Banning Rain would simply turn our current meta that roughly revolves around rain, sun, sand, and weatherless to revolve around sun, sand, and weatherless. What I see is not innovation, but further centralization around Keldeo, Tyranitar, Landorus, Chlorophyll users, Latios, Terrakion, Kyurem-Black, etc. Some Pokemon like Conkeldurr may see greater use, but they already see usage (by tournament players no less) in this meta infested by TTar. People will continue to use and steal the next best thing, and the innovators will continue to innovate. Banning Rain doesn't solve this lack of creativity, because it's a player's choice to be creative or not. As Ojama puts it, banning Rain would not change people's teambuilding (or lack thereof) habits. Banning Rain does pose an unnecessary risk of breaking the delicate balance of power established in OU, and make the metagame further centralized around the existing key threats, though. Unless our goal is to downsize BW2 OU, then I'd say banning Rain would have an overall adverse effect.

Match Ups:

alexwolf puts it well - Rain can be as match-up dependent or independent as the player chooses. Strictly speaking, a Rain team is a team with Politoed - the other 5 mons can be as reliant to Politoed's rain as you may choose. If we wanted to ban something that is TRULY match-up reliant, we would have banned BP teams a long time ago. Obviously, we haven't because these heavily specialized teams are inflexible, formulaic in play, and are often inconsistent when it comes to long-term performance. We don't prohibit people from using inferior and exploitable team archetypes.

Most battles aren't won or lost at the start of team preview, it's usually won by the better player. I have seen handful of battles during tours where the formula of "sun beats dugtrio-less rain" or "sand stall beats rain" being contradicted. I've witnessed Volcarona of a sun user sweep an opposing rain user under Rain. Hell, I've even seen battles of WEATHERLESS teams beating Rain teams, probably more than all the other scenarios! I second alexwolf's view that this "match up" defense is overly exaggerated and ultimately the better player wins, regardless of the opponent running rain or not.

Overpowered:

Some brought up how Rain is overpowered, but from my playing experience this "immense power" has not been something that I cannot overcome with proper teambuilding and playing a good game of Pokemon. Keldeo for instance, must choose between Speed or Special Attack. If it chooses Speed and goes Scarf, then there are many Pokemon that come in tank a hit or even two (or three). If Keldeo chooses power by going CM + 3 Attacks, EB, or even Specs, there are still handful of solid defensive counters as well as offensive checks that can take it out. Unless your team is composed of 4-5 Pokemon that Keldeo's dual STAB OHKO, your team shouldn't outright lose to Keldeo. If one cannot stop a rampaging Keldeo, then that player most probably deserves to lose (either b/c of poor teambuilding or poor plays).

On Bans:

Lavos has mentioned how ban "isn't a negative thing!" He explained that ban has a negative connotation associated with it, and offered an alternative phrase of "to officially or legally prohibit." Despite how you re-word it, a ban prohibits you from using something; you are not allowed to use this banned element under ANY circumstances, no matter how much you want to. Some Anti-Drizzle ban state how Rain restricts BW2 OU, but have forgotten to acknowledge that a ban is the greatest restriction force imposed upon us. If we want to deprive people from using one of the dominant playstyles of OU, you better be sure that Rain is a large detriment to the metagame. From what I have explained above, it's apparent that this is not the case, and banning Rain would do more harm than good.

The reason I am exploring this argument is because I believe that if a sound argument can be made concluding that rain is a detriment to competitiveness, no one in the community could ever hold that rain should not be banned. Where as the conclusion that Rain makes pokemon less fun, even if proven, may not be sufficient to convince the community to ban it.

First I will describe some things in order to be clear, you may call these my assumptions:

1. It is thought by some that in a competitive situation the player with the most skill will win the highest percentage of the time. An alternate formulation of this would be to say: In a competitive situation where 2 players face off, the player of greatest skill should win a significantly higher percentage of the time.
2. Banning rain means banning the ability Drizzle.
3. Winning a match with a counter-team or anti-team does not indicate that a player has a higher level of skill than the opponent who was counter-teamed.

1. If it is the case that rain creates a situation in which team match-up is the greatest factor determining victory, than rain contributes to an uncompetitive situation. When I say 'team match-up is the greatest factor' I mean that in a match-up between two players of competent skill level, the composition of the teams will determine the winner a very large portion of the time. For example, pro-banners have argued that as it stands team match-up is often insurmountable. When they say this, they mean that when 2 skilled players face-off, there is no opportunity for the player with a disadvantage to outplay the opponent, as the competent opponent can merely make the safest moves and avoid choking away their advantage. They mean to assert that the skill factor of both players is negated by the overwhelming determinance of team match-up. Where skill is negated, the player of highest skill does not win the greatest percentage of the time. SO if rain contributes to this phenomenon, it contributes to uncompetitiveness.

Working backwards, I (as proxy for the pro-ban side) must now show one of two things:

1. Rain creates a situation in which team match-up becomes the greatest factor determining victory.

2. Banning rain would create a situation in which team match-up would be less of a factor determining victory.

This will be the area where most of the debate in this thread must take place. I, as a neutral party (I would prefer to ban Keldeo and maybe one or two others and be done with it, but that is not the subject of this thread), will leave the proof of these last two points to the pro-ban side.

If either of these last two points are proven (if they can be proven at all), I think that no one can reasonably maintain a pro-rain position.

summary of the line of argument: If rain leads to a situation in which team match-up is the greatest or greater determinant of victory in a match, then rain makes pokemon less competitive and should be banned.

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I'm buffjesus#heartfather and I personally thought I had expanded on this enough times. I believe it's obvious Rain and Sun contribute to formuliac early-decision games like Deo-D did, and honestly don't completely understand why we look at just Rain or just Keldeo. I will outline again due to requests in the other debate thread why I believe this match up factor is obvious, and I would really be happy if I didn't have to do it again.

Let us step back really far, and look at a metagame as generally as possible. Just think DPP Ubers for a base. This was by policy a metagame with many broken pokemon, otherwise it would've just been OU. Pre-Arceus however was a very popular metagame among those who played it, despite Rain and Sun existing in it. These are free massive boosts to a team but their presences weren't minded, and in OU Sand was never hated. As far as we can discern, the reason there was little concern was because all of these pokemon were just Groudon / Kyogre / Tyranitar, not Sun / Rain / Sand, I think it's accepted by everyone here that these pokemon were used because of the contributions they were able to give on their own, not because of how much they could power up their team. In other words most teams actually played kind of similarly to a weatherless team, and those 3 pokemon operated in specific clear cut non weather roles like Lucario / Swampert / Heatran etc. would.

Here I would like to note that I have no idea what would happen if you took one of Groudon or Kyogre out of that metagame. They could have just been used as clear cut Lucarios and Swamperts because Rain and Sun balanced each other out to some extent.

Now that you've hopefully got my concept down, let's look as to how it relates to BW OU. It is 100% accepted that Politoed and Ninetails are not used as individual pokemon. There was a time when you'd see a random ScarfToed on a weatherless or sand team to revenge Excadrill, but that is absolutely extinct these days for the accepted reason that they should only be competitively used to create Rain or Sun teams. In colloquial terms, this means they are used as Ferrothorn / Tentacruel pairings, Venusaur / Sash Dugtrio / Spinner pairing / arbitrary strong Fire-type pairings, Tornadus / Dugtrio / Spinner / Ferrothorn / filler etc. pairings and once you start building a Rain or Sun team from there, it's silly to act like you wouldn't want your own weather to counteract it. I'll break this into new paragraphs for the sake of your eyes:

Explaining why Rain and Sun teams both obviously cause an uphill battle for weatherless teams involves looking at the boosts the entire team can get. I will basically divide this into the boosts of water attacks on their own, the abilities / moves pokemon gain, the effects of lost weaknesses, and how all of them combine to make rain clearly advantaged before moving on to the important part, why it is unhealthy.

To start with the water boost itself, chew on this. Specs Keldeo can sometimes OHKO Gyarados with Hydro Pump after Stealth Rock. It can also 2HKO Amoonguss after SR. To put it in colloquial terms again, if it's just going to beat you with it's spam attack when you're running the most reliable check available, and Sand prevents the 2HKO, you will use the Tyranitar or Hippowdon for Sand if your intention is to be able to withstand Keldeo with a balanced or defensive team. You may fairly argue that Baton Pass Celebi is more reliable but even that is getting KOed with a layer of Spikes and SR, which could easily be translated into having taken 10% prior damage, and I personally find it many times easier to wear down than Amoonguss. The power problem doesn't go away if you were to remove Keldeo from the equation, because things like Specs Rotom-W 2HKOing Blissey after SR and Specs Analytic Starmie 2HKOing SpD Rotom-W (both with Hydro Pump) will still happen. Here I ironically thank Alexwolf for the Starmie idea, and note that no one will ever suspect Rotom-W or Starmie. My interpretation of these facts is that the extra damage leads to less competitive games because one STAB move can cover all the bases as long as you're not thwarted by Water Absorb. To sum it up in simple terms, "Win the weather war and exert little effort until you get a free win", which we have all heard a bunch of times, becomes a reasonable game plan.

Secondary effects can basically be summed into abilities / moves / lost weaknesses, then into Tentacruel, Tornadus, and Ferrothorn respectively for the sake of keeping things simple. If Rain is just existing without a counteracting weather, what happened was one defensive spinner just became unquestionably superior to all of the other ones, one non water attacker just became almost clearly the best with Dugtrio support, and one wall became almost definitely the best mixed wall in the game. You may have heard me talking about "pre-built teams" before, and some have responded to me with something along the lines of: "People will always steal teams for easy wins", but I think I haven't gotten my point across clearly enough because I haven't explained how I feel about this game of favorites. For example, once we've established that Tornadus's mix of speed and ability to beat pokemon Dugtrio doesn't trap fits in with Rain makes it a clear "S Rank core choice" on a rain offense team, which I feel is pretty objective, that's half a team. On top of that, there will also be either Tentacruel or Starmie, and there you have 2/3s nailed in, not even including the Scarf Keldeo that should be there in just about every case with its gift of being the best water-type cleaner. There are also other phenomena like pairing the best water-type by miles (Keldeo) with the best defensive combo by miles "FerroCruel or Mie" then throwing on or subbing in stallbreakers / Lando-I counters / revenge killers based on what teams you want to beat. I consider teams like these, no matter what Feraligatr or whatever they use, to just be the same team. You can sure sub in a lot of things, and they will be viable, but my side of the argument is that while they are different mons they are the same team. All of these options will have that additional solidity thanks to the secondary effects, that along with the extra power they get, should make it clear that winning the weather war (or just not having to fight it at all) will give a truly significant extra chance for the rain team to win as long there's not a random Kingdra or something of the like, which will usually be random because it's well below average outside of beating rain teams.

Here I'd like to note why I see Feraligatr over Gyarados or something of the like not significant enough to change a team, where something like changing the mon you build around in a meta like DPP or a lower BW tier would. Building around Gatr or Gyara involves supporting Politoed as well, because winning the weather war will let the team function to its fullest and this will let the team win the majority of the time. In the other metas, the other team is a different type of challenge mostly every time I find. To help explain this I ask you to make a quick paradigm shift and view all pokemon teams from a spectrum in between Full Stall, Balance, and Heavy Offense from left to right. You will generally end up putting Rain stall / balance / offense and Sun stall / offense on a very similar point every time, while different DPP / BW UU teams will end up all over the map: instead of top team archetypes there are top threats, and when there are top threats instead of pre molded teams, in addition to less chains to similar support systems, you notice teams built around x threat aren't even necessarily similar anymore and it becomes clear IMO why there are many more situations where evaluating a new challenge using battling skill would be useful without Rain.

Notice that a similar team building restriction happens when building Sun teams: Sun offense is chained to Ninetails / Venu / Forry / Dug / Strong Fire-type / filler, while Sun stall is absolutely required to run Ninetails / Cresselia / Venu / Fire-sponger / Spinner / Sableye. Sure you can use an Espeon over Forry or use it in tandem via the filler slot on offense, maybe even run a Garchomp or something over Dugtrio to play the beat up Tar role. You can mix and match those two slots on sun stall, I even did see a Jelli over Sableye once, but it's painfully obvious what that team is going to look like, and you're going to beat or lose to both of them the same way every time because they are the same team. Rain isn't this drastic, but in my opinion it's closer to this level of matchup than just an individual group of non-weather functioning mons that are only lightly chained to certain combinations (think DPP things like Latias + Luke which were clearly good but not to the extent of near requirement at all). It goes without saying that the Sun strategy is to take advantage of weather boosts to get an easy win by earning perma-Sun, explaining why Dug + Goth is creeping up recently, and why you generally win or lose based on whether or not they can trap your weather starter.

Now that I've shown why Rain and Sun teams by competitive nature will follow certain molds, let's explore how to beat and get beat by them. Because rain can't do much better than running Toed / Ferroish steel / Keldeo / random / random / random, with the randoms always being something along the pool of StarmTenta, Gyara, Lati@s, Tornadus, Jirachi, Rotom-W, SpD Celebi, random lower tier water mon or Toxicroak etc., a dragonish mon like Garchomp / Dragonite who is half there just to beat up Sun, outside of a specific anti-defense mon like a boosting Haxorus or a Kyu-B (both of which can still be dealt with), you notice why standard sand stall looks something like Hippo or Tar / Rotom-W / Celebi / Lando-T / Steel etc. With Rotom-W, you can fairly easily keep them on the back foot if they try to get rain up as it can safely Volt Switch / WoW on almost everything, at worst case doubling out of Celebi into something it's not going to be threatening. As long as it's supported by a decent enough defensive core and doesn't give Tenta free turns to spin, it will be able to win the weather war and withstand Keldeo. For fun you can just throw a Rest Jellicent on the team if you're paranoid and it's almost as embarassing for the Rain team as a counter-teamed Sun, as long as you make at least a reasonable Sand team around the Jelli.

I won't go too much into how Sun works because that's not the debate, but I will leave as a note here how it's similar. Just be able to block the same things every time (Venu / Strong Fire-types, usually the same supporting core of Forry / Dug) that they are competitively obligated to run, and you will easily win. A Dragon team with a random but useful TTar is an example of a team that will over both types of Sun easily, a Sand team with Latias and a Scarftran will win almost every time, and a Rain team with Dugtrio and a dragon will not be having many issues. It's rather disgusting to me to imagine someone bringing a Dug-Torn team with Rain Dance Prankster Tornadus and acting like it's even a game vs sun. Translate standard Sun to standard Rain, replacing Venu / Fires with Keldeo / Tornaduses and Thunduruses etc., often with the same supporting cast of Ferro or other similar steel / water spinner, and you get the same challenges to beat every time as I explained in the last paragraph.

To provide an example I would like to point to the one Alexwolf posted and BKC quoted. All I can do is tell you my interpretation of what happened, which is that Alexwolf posted a formulaic game in which a Sand stall team beat a rain team from the beginning. Alexwolf's response to BKC pointing out that the rain team can run Gothitelle or Thund-T only tells me that in Goth's case, the Rain team can just flip over the "win the weather win the game" thing if it can trap the sand streamer, or hope that the Sand team is weak enough to Thund-T so that it can slightly force the sand streamer to be weakened and only be a team matchup game to a certain extent.

Of course the problem wouldn't exist if Rain and Sun were as bad as I might be making them sound. They are both top tier strategies, and what my side is saying is the reason for this is the way they can overpower a weather war (thus earning a formulaic win or loss depending on the side) if they had the right trapper, or you expected your opponent to bring a Sand / Weatherless team, beefing it up to be a better team with a surprise mon or set to try to win that scenario. Of course maybe one of the surprise sets a Rain team brought can win, but I find this a much less likely scenario when the Sand team is generally solid.

For those curious or helped by knowing why I hold these stances, I developed them by observing these general guidelines and them applying them a heavy amount of times against people who agree / disagree / don't care to ponder, as well as getting them applied against me by the same full spectrum of people.

Hopefully this completely clears up all questions about my view that BW OU is a lesser counterpart to it's lower tiers in terms of involving battling skill, here's a summary that should be sufficiently supported by the above paragraphs:

-Rain, like Sun, has certain favorite pokemon.

-Rain, like Sun, prefers the same or similar supporting crew often.

-Rain, like Sun, is competitively obligated to function the same way the majority of the time.

-Both weathers get a clear strength advantage at negligible cost if no other weather opposes.

-Both weathers have a generally accepted all or nothing nature decided at the weather war.

-Small mon changes like Feraligatr over Gyara or Victini over Darmanitan don't really make it a different team.

-Because the teams are obligated to function a similar way the majority or just all of the time, it will quickly become formulaic and often decided at team preview.

-With this, Rain is lowering the emphasis on in battle skill and instead raising emphasis on team matchup rolls at the high levels.

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Everyone brought good arguments here but I'd like to give my point of view about the creativity. If we remove Drizzle, is the Metagame really more creative? I mean, you guys are claiming that Drizzle reduces the creativity, which is wrong in my opinion, but did you think about a potential Metagame without Drizzle? Everyone would use Sun, Sand and Weatherless Teams with absolutely nothing else new than in the current Metagame. I hope that everyone agrees about the fact that if we remove Drizzle then we have to remove Drought as well. Drought without Drizzle would be almost unbeatable, as it already is but even worse, and so people would either use Sun Teams or Sand Teams with either Hippowdon or Shed Shell Tyranitar to not get trapped or Weatherless Teams with 3-4 Dragons. So yeah, I really don't see why removing Drizzle would help the creativity. That's how people work, they always use the most broken stuff to win and that will always be the case with Drizzle banned or not banned. Do you guys really think that Landorus, Terrakion, Latios, Keldeo etc would decrease in Usage Stats because Drizzle is banned? Definitely not.

Just imagine a Metagame without Drizzle which would mean that things like Toxicroak, Tentacruel, Gyarados would be useless. Would you like facing a Sun Stall with Cresselia, Venusaur, Heatran, etc? Definitely not. So that's obvious that if we remove Drizzle we remove Drought. So now let's talk about a Metagame without Drizzle and Drought. Would it change something? Would you start using stuff like Infernape or Hydreigon? Maybe, who knows but how many Teams with the Lando-Keld-Latios core would we have? Probably as much as in the current Metagame, maybe more I think.

As I said it in my first post, if Drizzle gets banned a few stuff would become useless. Tentacruel, Toxicroak and Tornadus-I (maybe a bit more). Do these things have a huge impact on the Metagame? You can basically use whatever you want in Rain except a few things so I don't see what would change if Drizzle gets banned. Keldeo will still be extremely often used, same for Latios, Terrakion, Landorus etc. Banning Drought would mean that Venusaur becomes useless and that's an important point. Swift Swim + Drizzle is banned but Chlorophyl + Drought isn't and this is probably the biggest issue here.

What really benefits from the gain of power on Water Moves? Politoed, Keldeo, Lati@s, Starmie and Rotom-W. Keldeo is definitely the biggest issue because I do agree Keldeo in Rain is extremely powerful. Politoed isn't broken by itself, I know SpecsToed is strong but it's slow and easily killable. I mean, we unbanned Kyurem-B although it has 170 BS in Attack which is one of the strongest Physical Pokemon of the entire game. In addition, it has an amazing STAB known as Outrage and even Ice Beam. Did we unban it? Yes we did because the majority of the player said it was easily Revenge Killable and because it's slow. That's basically the same thing with Politoed that is less strong than Kyurem-B. So actually, Keldeo is the biggest issue in my opinion. What if be ban Keldeo for example? Would Drizzle still be broken as you guys are claiming it? I really don't think so but I might be wrong.

To summarize this post, I really don't think that banning Drizzle would help the creativity that is in my opinion really good. Bannig Drizzle would just help Drought being more broken that is already is and people would still use the same stuff as now: Landorus, Terrakion, Keldeo etc. There is only 1 Pokemon that really benefits from the Rain, Keldeo. The rest doesn't really benefit from it, sure it help a few things like Tentacruel but it's not "broken". Sand and Sun Teams easily deal with those things. So yeah, while I can agree with you about a few things, I really disagree about the creativity stuff (and matchups as well but will talk about it in another post).

By the way, this thread lacks of amazing avatars... Do you see what I'm talking about? Come on LonelyNess don't be shy, you know you're beautiful ~~

To summarize this post, I really don't think that banning Drizzle would help the creativity that is in my opinion really good. Bannig Drizzle would just help Drought being more broken that is already is and people would still use the same stuff as now: Landorus, Terrakion, Keldeo etc. There is only 1 Pokemon that really benefits from the Rain, Keldeo. The rest doesn't really benefit from it, sure it help a few things like Tentacruel but it's not "broken". Sand and Sun Teams easily deal with those things. So yeah, while I can agree with you about a few things, I really disagree about the creativity stuff (and matchups as well but will talk about it in another post).

By the way, this thread lacks of amazing avatars... Do you see what I'm talking about? Come on LonelyNess don't be shy, you know you're beautiful ~~

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i generally agree with this post in the sense that if we nerfed some of rain's best pokemon it would be a little easier to deal with, the fact that sun would become overpowering is NOT a reason to keep drizzle in OU. if drizzle is broken in its current state, we should try to nerf or ban it. drought's OU status is completely unrelated and keeping drizzle ou to check drought is akin to keeping giratina in OU to check blaziken. if drought becomes too overpowered (which i actually think it would / already is) after drizzle is banned, we'll deal with it separately.

You cannot dismiss the matchup issue by saying "if you don't want to win/lose on matchup then don't bring a matchup-prone team" because it goes both ways. What if the other guy brings one of these teams that either slaughters or gets slaughtered based on what his opponent has?

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If this happens, then only your opponent is in a losing position, as you made sure that your team won't be very match-up reliant. And teams that don't insta-lose against most popular team types can be made, and in fact there can be made with most weathers. I don't know about sun, but i have built many weatherless, rain, and sand teams that have skill as the most deciding factor in most of the games (ok my weatherless teams struggled a bit against sun, but are we really complaining because one team-type has a big disadvantage to another?)

First of all, let's not pretend that the majority of games with Drizzle involved aren't decided from team preview! Denial isn't going to get us anywhere. Drizzle basically depends on having a good matchup. If it's a good one, it wins easily, if it's bad, it loses horribly. By "improving your matchup", you basically go from auto-losing to auto-winning, not having a better shot at beating your opponent through outplaying him. For example, most rain teams brutally lose to sun, unless the rain team is packing Dugtrio - if it does, then it wins ridiculously easily, unless there is a Shed Shell Ninetales, in which case it's back to brutally losing. Can you see how the entire outcomes of these games are being decided on pre-battle selection? We do not want this in our ideal metagame. We want the guy who plays better to win. We do not want the idiot who makes his pre-battle preparations bycounter-styling his opponent to make sure he has a ridiculously good matchup to win. Obviously team matchup will always be a factor in Pokemon, but it should never be so ridiculous to the point where games are literally being decided on the teams brought.

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It depends BKC. If your rain team is match-up reliant and faces match-up reliant teams, then of 'course the outcome of the game will be mostly decided my match-up. But if you build a rain team that isn't match-up reliant you can make sure that skill will be the deciding factor in most of your games. You say that rain easily loses to sun unless it uses Dugtrio and that sun easily loses to rain if rain has Dugtrio. Can i ask why you blame weather for this? Dugtrio has the ability to weaken the defensive backbone of some teams, letting certain sweepers wreck havoc, not weather. It is true that because of weather Dugtrio became popular, but its service shouldn't be tied with weather in any way. In the examples you mentioned, it's Dugtrio that makes those match ups insta-lose or insta-win not the weather inducers. Also, rain teams that don't insta-lose or insta-win against sun can be made, and it's not something particularly hard to do. As long as the rain ream has a way to set-up and keep up SR it should have a fighting chance against sun. Or it could use Pokemon that are problematic for sun teams, such as Rain Dance Tornadus, Choice Specs Moltres, and Dragon-types (especially Kyu-B and Kyurem, which don't give a shit about Heatran and have incredible bulk).There are ways for team-types that are usually match-up reliant to become less match-up reliant, to the point where skill becomes more important once again, but people prefer to use the standard rain and sun teams that are more match-up reliant. Why this happens? Maybe because the match-up reliant weather teams are easier to use, maybe because they are overall more successful, or maybe because ladderers tend to mindlessly follow trends, but the point is that solutions do exist. If a player doesn't want to use a less match-up reliant weather team because this kind of team is harder to use or is less successful overall (without being bad, mediocre, or outclassed in general though) then it's his choice. But he can't complain how most of the games he plays are very match-up reliant, because he is the one that chose his games to be so match-up reliant.

Drizzle and Drought are the abusable weathers. The guys running these teams wouldn't look twice at Politoed or Ninetales if it weren't for their abilities. They are the most important Pokemon on their team; if they go down, the game is as good as over. These entire games revolve around killing 1 Pokemon. Be it through lures, trappers, whatever, once you kill that one Pokemon, you've as good as won the game. Sand (and lol hail) don't have this problem because sand teams aren't abusing their weather to the point that they completely crumble without their inducer. They're more focused on playing a real game of Pokemon - one where you achieve your goal by killing all six of your opponent's mons, not one involving sun/rain where you focus on killing one mon and then let your team do the rest of the work for you. Look at any good ADV/DPP team. Do they focus on killing the one mon that prevents them from being ridiculously abusable and noob-friendly? No, they work together as a cohesive unit. Rain/sun teams are as follows: kill the other weather inducer and abuse the shit out of your own weather until you win. That shit does not belong in an ideal metagame. It promotes lazy play and is the main reason why "BW (BAN ME PLEASE)" are often trashed when trying to play past generations, because in RBY/GSC/ADV/DPP, there aren't any ridiculously easy pick-up-and-win methods these players who are used to steamrolling their poor opponents with unfairly strong tactics can use to bullshit their wins.

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This is your own idea of what a ''real game of Pokemon'' is, and can be different for every player. I could argue that games where your main sweeper is walled by 1 Pokemon revolve around killing this Pokemon, or that games where my team is troubled by hazards revolve around getting past the opponent's spinblocker, but in the end it makes no difference. I get that you don't like the games having so much focus around a certain Pokemon, but you must accept that this is a very subjective opinion that is difficult and near impossible to warrant the ban of weather (at least not without any other reason) and that using different types of teams is always an option. Nice and bad metagame are terms different than balanced or not metagame, so weather shouldn't be banned for creating a bad metagame if it doesn't create an unbalanced one.

Rain also limits diversity. Where the hell did Conkeldurr go? What about Reuniclus? Anyone seen Infernape lately? The list of mons who were kicked into obscurity by rain's brutal power goes on forever. If you're not abusing weather (sun/rain teams are very limited in what they can run and still be effective), you are bending over backwards to make sure you don't get rolled the hell over by it, and the methods required to do that aren't exactly extensive. To stomach rain-boosted Hydro Pumps, you need at least two water resists, one of which needs incredibly heavy amounts of special defense, as well as a weather inducer of your own. You're not forced to do this, of course, but by not doing so you're putting yourself at a ridiculous disadvantage.

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This point has already been addressed so i won't get into details, but weather actually brings diversity to the metagame. We have more OU viable Pokemon that ever (or so i think, correct me if i am wrong), and so many team types available. We can see from the usage stats that there isn't any threat that is particularly overcentralizing and OU has more Pokemon than ever, so i can't see how we are talking about rain limiting diversity. Ok, Pokemon that hate strong water attacks and get no benefit from rain will decrease in usage, but this list is very small compared to the list of Pokemon that found life due to rain (Tentacruel, Toxicroak, Azumarill, Tornadus, Dugtrio, SubPetaya Empoleon, Moltres, Feraligatr, Amoonguss, offensive Gyarados, Sharpedo, and more), so i can't really accept that rain limits diversity.

If this happens, then only your opponent is in a losing position, as you made sure that your team won't be very match-up reliant. And teams that don't insta-lose against most popular team types can be made, and in fact there can be made with most weathers. I don't know about sun, but i have built many weatherless, rain, and sand teams that have skill as the most deciding factor in most of the games (ok my weatherless teams struggled a bit against sun, but are we really complaining because one team-type has a big disadvantage to another?)

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ok just quoting this part because it's the general idea of his entire argument

in this quote alexwolf is referring to bkc's assertion that even if you refuse to bring a matchup-reliant team, if your opponent brings one then you still are winning or losing based on matchup. alexwolf thinks that is wrong. let me explain why it isn't.

imagine you are in a scenario where you are on the po server getting ready to ladder with a generic sand stall team, let's say something along the lines of cb tar / jellicent / sdef celebi / sdef heatran / forretress / fast lando-t. you hit the find battle button, and come across an individual with a seemingly standard rain team, along the lines of politoed / garchomp / keldeo / terrakion / breloom / landorus. you have a check for every offensive threat they bring, and you win easily. hopefully that much would be clear to everyone in this thread. now imagine you hit the find battle button once more, and again you run into the same team. the outcome is, once again, the same. even though your team is supposedly not based upon team matchup, your opponent's team most definitely is, and thus they are choosing to lose to a team such as yours, while also deciding that they would prefer to win against sand and sun offense. now imagine that, once again, you have hit the find battle button, and you are placed into a battle where your opponent, from team preview, appears to have the same team, yet one crucial detail eludes you: they are packing u-turn landorus over the standard rock polish. thus, your team loses horribly because that particular variant of landorus plus rain support 6-0s you. do you understand the flaw in your reasoning now? in black and white ou, every single time you build a team it is going to be matchup-reliant in some sense of the phrase or another. even your sand stall team, which seemingly relies only on skill to beat the opponent, will always have matchups it always wins and matchups it always loses. that is the nature of bw2 ou.

so you may be asking yourself at this point, if everything is matchup-oriented, why has rain become the culprit? simply put, rain exacerbates the matchup problems that the generation inherently contains. by allowing certain pokemon such as keldeo to become so ridiculously overpowered due to rain's secondary effects, it creates an environment in which the person running the rain team brings politoed plus five offensive threats, and if the opponent lacks the means with which to check any one of these five checks, the rain user wins. if the opponent has the means to check all five threats, and plays correctly in addition to that prerequisite, then the rain user will lose. unfortunately, that's how 99% of games with rain involved play out - either you're winning or you're losing from the get-go. if you give me the team preview for two different teams, one of them with rain (or sun) and one without, i can tell you with near certainty which team is going to win the battle. it's becoming less and less of a game of skill and moreso a game of teams and counterteams.

as for ojama's point of stifling creativity, i think you're not seeing the bigger picture here. yes, from a limited perspective, banning drizzle would appear to decrease creativity, since it literally makes some pokemon unviable. however, the amount of pokemon that suddenly become viable as a result of drizzle's banning outnumber those that will be negatively impacted ten to one. it's important when evaluating impacts such as these to think more than one step ahead. instead of saying "what will immediately happen if we do this", it's better to think of what will happen immediately, and then what will happen as a result of that, and as a result of that, and as a result of that...and in the end, as explained in my previous post, if we continue to ban things that are broken i see no reason why our metagame should not become more balanced and enjoyable for everyone.

Bad Ass, you're missing Ojama's point: banning Rain wont improve creativity, but it will further centralize around the pre-existing top threats.

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no, pocket, you are the one missing ojama's point. as i explained above, ojama has a legitimate concern about creativity decreasing as a result of banning drizzle. however, you misinterpret it by saying that what ojama really means is that the metagame will become centralized around a few specific threats. that's wrong. don't take ojama's real argument and turn it into something laughable, please.

IN SUMMARY: i have honestly tried my best to weigh the pros and cons of every single argument made in this thread. i have read all the pro-ban posts of bkc, badass, jpw234, yee, myzozoa, and the great mighty doom, as well as the anti-ban arguments of ojama, alexwolf, and pocket. based on every argument and every example and bit of evidence provided, i still remain wholly convinced that drizzle is worthy of a ban. that is not to say that the opposition does not provide good arguments - ojama in particular has made some very convincing posts. however, i am inclined to believe that because drizzle is still the most powerful metagame force after three years' work of nerfing it, plus the fact that the metagame would most likely be a better place without it, that drizzle is not something that is healthy for the overused tier to have around. there are other arguments that i support, but have not listed here, because i see the two i have listed as the main issues to vote on. again, i can understand the anti-ban side's arguments, but the pro-ban ones make a lot more sense to me.

There seems to be some disagreement about the restrictiveness of rain, to the point where Pocket and alexwolf even argued that the metagame would become more centralized and less diverse in its absence. I am frankly astounded that anybody would hold this opinion, but there you go. Just for clarity I'd like to establish the pokemon that would become unviable post-Drizzle ban. For sake of argument I'll throw in sun pokemon too (so assuming Drizzle and Drought go).

On the other hand, we've got a bunch of other pokemon in OU who never see the light of day because of the prevalence of Drizzle/Drought. Conkeldurr, Reuniclus, Infernape, etc. Any UU pokemon which wants to get a chance in OU must be able to abuse a weather in order to do so, otherwise there's no point - post-ban oodles of UU/RU pokemon immediately gain niches in the OU metagame which are otherwise smothered by the predominance of weather. Obviously it's impossible to know for sure since it hasn't happened, but looking back to success in past generations and overall stats, pokemon like Azelf, Raikou, Bronzong, Empoleon, Meloetta, Zapdos, Virizion, Snorlax, Rotom-H and Machamp in UU all are quite good but lack a way to take advantage of the weather and as such are passed over for static rain pokemon like Rotom-W and Keldeo. That doesn't even scratch the surface of innovative niche possibilities in RU and NU - Accelgor, Aerodactyl, Feraligatr, Kabutops, Moltres, Rotom-C, Whimsicott, etc.
Look, it's possible that all of these pokemon could be crammed onto your standard rain team and made viable by some genius teambuilder. But it is undeniably the case that the existence of rain creates a "smoothing" effect which incentivizes teambuilders to stick to established powerhouses who can throw around STAB Hydro Pumps. Sure, maybe Raikou's got some stuff going for it, but why not Rotom-W? Zapdos is good, but why not Thundurus-T? Snorlax is a nice special wall, but we have FerroCruel and Jellicent. These niche pokemon don't see the light of day because there's no room for niches - there's rain, there's sun, and there's pokemon that specifically counter rain and sun threats, along with a select few that will be good no matter what based on stat distribution/movepool (Landorus-T, Terrakion, Breloom, etc).
Though I think that team matchup is a compelling argument, I am FIRMLY of the belief that the potential for creativity is more important. If you ban Drizzle and Drought, you lose six pokemon (who are only in OU because of their abilities which make them overly reliant on the weather - don't lose sight of that), but you gain the potential for MASSIVE strategic innovation. Maybe you'll play somebody at the top of the ladder and - gasp - have six completely different pokemon than them! Until we do that, every team will have one of Jirachi/Ferrothorn/Latias and we'll never go anywhere. Maybe that's fun for you, but to me it sounds like we've had rain for so long that we're scared of the massive changes that will occur when it goes away. CHANGE IS GOOD. Embrace it.

Edit: Also, the rain doesn't even go away! Rain dance/sunny day teams have been around since 3rd gen and are completely viable. Banning Drizzle/Drought would actually make more rain abusers viable by bringing back Swift Swimmers. You'd see Kabutops, Omastar, Ludicolo and Qwilfish. You'd see Tornadus and Moltres as Hurricane abusers. You'd see Uxie and Bronzong as bulky weather setters, Azelf and Electrode as speedy ones, etc. So don't give me "we need Drizzle for diversity".

to anyone who is using the creativity argument: it's not applicable. we already have an established precedent that losing creativity from a metagame is not a reason to keep something in OU. we saw a huge decrease in azumarill when excadrill was banned, but does that mean we should have kept it ou? i realize that the aforementioned example is on a much smaller scale (although i'm sure if i searched a little more i could find more+better examples), but the same principle applies.

beyond that, rain arguably reduces creativity from the metagame because of how much it forces you to overprepare. if you don't pack 2+ bulky resistances to water, you will get run through by specs/scarf keldeo, subdd gyarados, specs washer, etc. not to mention how i already said how much common water resists (amoonguss, latias, latios, offensive celebi, keldeo, dragonite, rotom-wash) get completetely destroyed by specs rain keldeo, specs ice beam politoed, specs washer, specs tornadus, etc.

now imagine that, once again, you have hit the find battle button, and you are placed into a battle where your opponent, from team preview, appears to have the same team, yet one crucial detail eludes you: they are packing u-turn landorus over the standard rock polish. thus, your team loses horribly because that particular variant of landorus plus rain support 6-0s you. do you understand the flaw in your reasoning now? in black and white ou, every single time you build a team it is going to be matchup-reliant in some sense of the phrase or another. even your sand stall team, which seemingly relies only on skill to beat the opponent, will always have matchups it always wins and matchups it always loses. that is the nature of bw2 ou.

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Losing some games where you met some specific threats that destroy your team doesn't make your team match-up reliant. If i understand correctly, the problem of you pro-banners of Drizzle, is that it makes match-up more important than skill in the long run, thus undermining the importance of skill as the primary deciding factor of a game. If a team, for example the sand stall team you mentioned, loses a few games because it met U-turn Landorus or whatever, i don't get how this team is match-up reliant at all. Well of 'course it is match-up reliant, as even the worse Pokemon players can tell you that every single game and team was, is, and will be match-up reliant. The point is if this reliance is big enough to undermine the importance of skill, which in the case of the sand stall team you mentioned is not happening.

fat Lavos Spawn said:

so you may be asking yourself at this point, if everything is matchup-oriented, why has rain become the culprit? simply put, rain exacerbates the matchup problems that the generation inherently contains. by allowing certain pokemon such as keldeo to become so ridiculously overpowered due to rain's secondary effects, it creates an environment in which the person running the rain team brings politoed plus five offensive threats, and if the opponent lacks the means with which to check any one of these five checks, the rain user wins. if the opponent has the means to check all five threats, and plays correctly in addition to that prerequisite, then the rain user will lose. unfortunately, that's how 99% of games with rain involved play out - either you're winning or you're losing from the get-go. if you give me the team preview for two different teams, one of them with rain (or sun) and one without, i can tell you with near certainty which team is going to win the battle. it's becoming less and less of a game of skill and moreso a game of teams and counterteams.

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Putting Keldeo aside, what you said is that rain exacerbates the match-up problems because it creates teams with 5 super strong offensive Pokemon that are very hard to contain without the necessary tools. And i can't really understand this kind of reasoning. Every single rain threat and all of them combined have plenty of Pokemon and ways that check them (once again, except for Keldeo), making dealing with rain a very feasible feat. I don't get why you treat rain offense so differently, when threats such as SD SubSalac Terrakion, DD Dragonite, Scarf Salamence, and LO Latios, are some of the most potent offensive threats out there, can be used on any kind of team, and are as hard to contain, if not harder, than offensive Pokemon that thrive in rain. Every well-built offensive team is difficult to contain, because this is the point, so i don't see where is the problem with rain offense teams being difficult to contain (as long as it is possible without taking extreme measures). An offensive team that is not difficult to contain won't be successful. Finally, i don't agree with what you say about 99% of the games involving rain being decided by match-up, as rain teams that are not hugely match-up reliant exist and are not overly hard to build. As long as you make sure to cover the individual threats that trouble your team (if you are using rain offense, it would be smart to carry something to take care of Hippo and Jellicent for example. Even T-Spikes Tenta + spinblocker work if you don't want to use Gothitelle or NP Thundurus-T) you can be sure that skill will be the deciding factor in the majority of your games. As i said again, people chose to use very match-up reliant teams while they have the option to build less match-up reliant teams that rely more on skill than on match-up, so it's their fault if the majority of their games is decided by match-up.

Now let me explain why i excluded Keldeo from the above paragraph. As i have explained once more in this thread, Keldeo has a number of reasons that make it one of the best, if not the best, Pokemon in OU. Drizzle is one of them but not the only one, and certainly not the most important one. If Keldeo has the power, Speed, and durability to consistently break through teams, then what makes you think that this is Drizzle's fault? I know it is easy to say ''Keldeo without rain wouldn't be an issue'' but the same can be said for rain, as ''rain without Keldeo wouldn't be an issue''. Some people might say that enough Pokemon have been banned already to prove that Drizzle is the culprit, but as long as the positives that Drizzle brings to the metagame outweight the negatives, Drizzle won't be the culprit. If Drizzle takes away 4-5 Pokemon from OU (those banned due to rain) but brings another 9-10, and all this without being inherently broken, then it is only logical to think that Drizzle benefits the metagame more than it hurts it. So, not including Keldeo, rain doesn't make any Pokemon overpowered for OU standards. Starmie, Thundurus-T, Tornadus, and every other rain abuser in OU are just fine, and even the combination of them is fine. They can all be handled by plenty of Pokemon and strategies that exist and are viable in OU, and for this reason are not broken.

fat Bad Ass said:

to anyone who is using the creativity argument: it's not applicable. we already have an established precedent that losing creativity from a metagame is not a reason to keep something in OU. we saw a huge decrease in azumarill when excadrill was banned, but does that mean we should have kept it ou? i realize that the aforementioned example is on a much smaller scale (although i'm sure if i searched a little more i could find more+better examples), but the same principle applies.

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Creativity alone is not a reason to keep something in OU if it is broken or overpowered. As long as Drizzle isn't broken or overpowered and the positives it brings to the metagame are more than the negatives then i don't see any reason for Drizzle to get banned. I know that people talk about huge match-up reliance, but from my experience this is the fault of the players and not of the meta, and is an argument that is kind of overblown. After all, dealing with sand stall or whatever threatens your rain team comes down to dealing with certain threats, and it is very possible to have ways in your rain team to deal with those problems.

fat Bad Ass said:

beyond that, rain arguably reduces creativity from the metagame because of how much it forces you to overprepare. if you don't pack 2+ bulky resistances to water, you will get run through by specs/scarf keldeo, subdd gyarados, specs washer, etc. not to mention how i already said how much common water resists (amoonguss, latias, latios, offensive celebi, keldeo, dragonite, rotom-wash) get completetely destroyed by specs rain keldeo, specs ice beam politoed, specs washer, specs tornadus, etc.

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If you don't pack two checks to whatever strategy is the most popular and dominant you can't succeed in any meta, so it's not like the Drizzle-meta is the only instance where we see this. If you don't pack two Terrakion checks you will struggle in a Terrakion centred meta, if you don't pack two Dragon-type checks you will struggle in a Dragon-spam centered meta, and if you don't pack two checks to physical sweepers you will struggle in a physical HO centered meta. This is just the way it goes.

I'm so sad that alexwolf skipped right over my post (whyyyy), but would like to rebut anyway. Specifically what he says here:

Putting Keldeo aside, what you said is that rain exacerbates the match-up problems because it creates teams with 5 super strong offensive Pokemon that are very hard to contain without the necessary tools. And i can't really understand this kind of reasoning. Every single rain threat and all of them combined have plenty of Pokemon and ways that check them (once again, except for Keldeo), making dealing with rain a very feasible feat. I don't get why you treat rain offense so differently, when threats such as SD SubSalac Terrakion, DD Dragonite, Scarf Salamence, and LO Latios, are some of the most potent offensive threats out there, can be used on any kind of team, and are as hard to contain, if not harder, than offensive Pokemon that thrive in rain. Every well-built offensive team is difficult to contain, because this is the point, so i don't see where is the problem with rain offense teams being difficult to contain (as long as it is possible without taking extreme measures). An offensive team that is not difficult to contain won't be successful.

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Kidogo raised a very similar point in the last couple of posts on the sign-up thread so I'm basically going to repeat my response here, emphasizing that this appears to be only my opinion so I'm not speaking for the other anti-rain people in this thread. I don't see a large difference in the power of rain sweepers, as though the rain offense/defense threats are on their own broken far more than the other threatening pokemon in the meta like CBRak, LO Latios, others that alexwolf mentions, etc. The distinction is in the reliance on rain and therefore the way they get answered when teambuilding. (The following is basically copied from my response in the signup thread) Example being, I probably need to counter CBTerrakion or SubSalac. But to do so I can pack Gliscor, or Slowbro, or Hippowdon, or Tangrowth, or to revenge I can have Scizor or Conkeldurr or Breloom or a faster scarfer like Latios. Other than Hippowdon, none of these pokemon lock me in to a specific playstyle because countering Terrakion entails exactly and only that - countering Terrakion, because it's stand alone.
On the other hand, consider how I have to deal with rain threats when making a defensive team. I have to stop Keldeo, Agility or NP Thundy-T, the new NastyPass Celebi (DAMN IT KIDOGO), DDGyara, SpecsToed, Starmie, etc, and also the defensive threats like FerroCruel, CMRachi, etc. MAYBE if I was a BW2 savant I could create a team that handles all of these threats (although probably not, most agree that full stall is dead and semi-stall requires revenge killers at least). Alternatively, of course, I could simply pack Ninetales and Gothitelle/Dugtrio along with one other pokemon dedicated to helping me win the weather war, and then use Venusaur to beat literally every single one of those pokemon before they become a threat. And why can I do that?
Because rain creates the condition where every single threat has a common thing that makes it dangerous - rain. Rather than countering the POKEMON (as I do with Terrakion, Latios, etc.), I counter the WEATHER which makes the pokemon threatening in the first place. And this is what makes rain uniquely worse than just the other powerful pokemon out there. Rather than making an innovative team that deals with all of the threats on their own merits, I just pack Ninetales, or TTar, or run HippoStall, or maybe if you're awesome you use Abomasnow. And once I do that I have immediately limited the number of viable teammates, limited the number of viable strategies, and now we as a userbase have drastically limited the viable metagame, all because rain creates a MASSIVE pressure to counter with your own weather.

Edit: I would also like to emphasize that this argument is entirely distinct from the team matchup argument that the others seem to be making. While I agree that rain creates a slightly matchup-based metagame I'm not entirely certain to what degree this is the case, how inevitable it is, or whether it's a reason to ban. The reason I'm outlining that rain should go is because it discourages strategic creativity by centralizing the game around controlling the weather.

This post is not meant to be particularly long, but just to serve some specific purposes. Firstly, this is a notification that my first post is complete. It can be linked to the other arguments on my side if you like and I will make an effort to do so if others ask, but for now it is just there to explain my view. Secondly, I would like to point out what I think are the self-evident fallacies that have been posted by the other side. I have a lot of respect for the guys, but if we're going to debate the subjective parts of our arguments these things should be straightened out first.

I hope that everyone agrees about the fact that if we remove Drizzle then we have to remove Drought as well. Drought without Drizzle would be almost unbeatable, as it already is but even worse, and so people would either use Sun Teams or Sand Teams with either Hippowdon or Shed Shell Tyranitar to not get trapped or Weatherless Teams with 3-4 Dragons.

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Just imagine a Metagame without Drizzle which would mean that things like Toxicroak, Tentacruel, Gyarados would be useless. Would you like facing a Sun Stall with Cresselia, Venusaur, Heatran, etc? Definitely not. So that's obvious that if we remove Drizzle we remove Drought. So now let's talk about a Metagame without Drizzle and Drought. Would it change something? Would you start using stuff like Infernape or Hydreigon? Maybe, who knows but how many Teams with the Lando-Keld-Latios core would we have? Probably as much as in the current Metagame, maybe more I think.

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This is forecasting of a potential future metagame, which is a huge no-no. It cannot be justified on this site to argue against the banning of a pokemon by pointing out how bad the immediately resulting metagame is, the reasons being that it contradicts our nature of making bans as simple as possible by trying to predict a whole new metagame (this is why Iconic has his speech about not voting on which meta you like better in the voting threads), and that we will be better off anyway if we discover underlying broken factors and end up banning those too. If those things weren't broken needless to say it would also fairly certainly be a win if the voters had pushed Drizzle out.

As Ojama puts it, banning Rain would not change people's teambuilding (or lack thereof) habits. Banning Rain does pose an unnecessary risk of breaking the delicate balance of power established in OU, and make the metagame further centralized around the existing key threats, though. Unless our goal is to downsize BW2 OU, then I'd say banning Rain would have an overall adverse effect.

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This is not a reason to say Rain isn't broken, this is a justification behind our philosophy of being very reluctant to ban things. On the side there is more forecasting of the new metagame, I don't like assuming that the metagame will become more centralized around key threats when it's not even clear whether or not OU would grow or shrink in size without Drizzle. If the top threats are much worse than any other ordinary threat maybe some of them will be found broken and we will have solved an underlying problem again.

Regardless of what Aldaron said, the worry of breaking a metagame that we won't have the time to fix is a legitimate concern, from a logical standpoint. Don't focus on this point a lot, as it's not even in the main list of reasons that i don't want to see Drizzle banned. I just said this to back up every user that finds time to be an important factor as to why he doesn't want to band Drizzle.

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I'm glad we've agreed this isn't a huge point, but I would still rather this isn't involved at all. The idea is a player doesn't skew his vote to reflect anything but his thoughts on whether or not the current metagame is balanced, not outside issues like these. For the record, Aldaron played out the scenario of giving the metagame extra time to settle and the council extra time to discuss before moving on the likely future suspects, which was done before XY.

I am not talking about a game, i am talking about many games. I am just taking into consideration that the factor called match-up reliance may not be such a big one in the long run, because similar to hax, it's a two sided coin. There are good match-ups and there are bad match-ups too. So, what i am saying is that in the long run, the sum of games that were very reliant to match-up may not be as many as you think, provided that good and bad match-ups even out. For example, let's say you had a team and battled 100 games with it. You won 35 games due to very good match-up and lost 20 for the same reasons. This means that out of the 55 games that were very reliant on match-up, 40 of them even out and equal to 0, leaving only 15 games very reliant on match-up out of 100 games. Of 'course this is not a real example, i just put it there to explain what i mean.

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I don't mean to necessarily point this out as a bad argument, but I would like to be assured you don't ever expect more than half of games to be matchup-based like in this example. It's generally agreed by everyone that skill needs to be the main factor with matchup minimized to a reasonable extent. If I was making an example I'd at least hope the metagame was deciding 10-20% or less based on matchup.